ponsaelius

That article in the Times is grim reading tbh, hope it's a load of shite

Branthwaite is definitely both footed mind. Think he's been wrongly profiled as a lefty only.

Convinced this is all garbage personally

A truly miserable spectacle

The mad thing is the closest game Chelsea have had all tournament was the qualifying round against Servette.

Another failed hate watch

They finished 10 points behind Bilbao who got twatted by Man Utd mind.

Conte staying seemingly now, the mad cunt

He's a club legend regardless of the fee. Goes without saying that he's probably the best value signing we've ever made IMO when accounting for transfer fee inflation.

Hope he doesn't, I feel represented

Eddie is a fucking genius when you look at how destabilising this was and how shit things were genuinely looking in mid-December. To turn that round to our best season in living memory is insane

Got to say none of that surprises me. It was hard to miss how much it destabilised the feeling around the club early in the season.

All of that is irrelevant in comparison to the length of his deal though. If he signs a new deal then yes, otherwise he can leave for nothing next year.

The Fair Cup in 1969 was MUCH stronger than the current iteration of the Europa League. That really goes without saying given the teams that were qualifying for it in respect to their positions in the respective leagues, and the strength of those leagues at the time. It was probably marginally weaker than the early years of the UEFA Cup, by virtue of the 1 club per city rule, but really not by much.

Eddie's overpay for UK based players and worry about it later mags, let's go

I'm just joking pal, don't sweat it

Eddie Amin and Eddie Howcescu are both superb efforts. What else have we got? Eddinva Howexa?

Hope we sign some Usain Bolt regen for the right wing slot, if only to annoy you

In bits when everybody's expecting moneyball forrins and Eddie just blows the entire budget on two Cumbrians in Trafford and Branthwaite instead.

Oh aye, of course, and I'd take somebody with Howe's football acumen and eye for a player over these faceless suit types every single day of the week. My issue with it is the club has to be set up eventually to be able to operate independent of who the head coach is. I think it is almost impossible to set up the club that way while he's here, so it's a bit of a catch 22.

Seems to me that there was a clear conflict in terms of targets and we've backed Eddie. Love Eddie and it's the right call to back him but do still think this is going to cause issues in the long run that Eddie literally wants almost complete control in an era where that isn't really a thing.

My chosen model would personally be 2-3 proper top quality first XI signings and then some pragmatic free transfers like we did (and tried to do in case of Tosin) last summer. I could totally see the alternative argument for 5 or 6 £10-20 million signings though.

Fair point on that latter bit. It does become pretty hard to double your money on £40 million signings, particularly if you've bought them at age 23-24 yourself.

The converse argument to that model you could say though is that Eddie has proven to get maximum out of all players he deals with - and that we'd be better off just keep pushing the boat out for top draw quality at the right age to improve the first XI (IE more Tonali, Isak level players) and relegate existing starters to back up. Rather than spreading our bets on a load of calculated gambles like teams like Brighton do. I think this is better for increasing the club's global image and keeping existing stars too tbh. We could always sell a purple if it ultimately came to it. I get that it's a difficult balance to strike though.

It's been a bizarre season really because it has felt like we've had a few spells of being really a bit shit. But when we've been good we've put together some ridiculous runs of form.