Erikse

For me a great signing from a price perspective is one that exceeds the expectations from the price we paid. I think Barnes has been on par overall. Which is decent. But it's kind of rare that people rate their own players or signings as "decent". They go from bad to great in a heartbeat. My post was exclusively replying to a comment on why Chelsea are paying more for Pedro. To me that's pretty clear. Whether it works out or not remains to be seen.

The fact that he has someone very good starting ahead of him doesn't really make the signing better, though. It's like buying an expensive backup for Isak and give the signing a better rating from a business perspective because he has someone world class infront of him. That's like half of the reason someone was disappointed until he hit good form, but then got benched again. I get he was injured in the first season, but we can't just exclude that season entirely from the evaluation. He has helped us getting top 5 this season, but there are probably many different routes we could have taken with the money that also would have gotten us there.

They are not allways the most accurate, but I still generally find them more accurate than the valuation of fans of the players club. A vast majority of fans would value their players and signings higher than what the reality is. Especially if things has been going well recently.

Look, if someone told you in 2023 that we were going to spend £40m someone that would have more bench performances than starts in the next 2 seasons, would we be excited? He has largely done well when called upon, and he will come in handy next season, but that doesn't mean that it was necessarily great business. It was just decent imo, which is fine. And to be clear, when I say questionable, I only mean one that you could maybe question. Here's what transfermarkt has to say about player values: Barnes percieved value hasn't gone up in years. He's still rated at 35m euros. Pedros value has been going up and he's rated at 50m currently. Do you think the top clubs are more likely to want Barnes (when we bought him) for 40m than Pedro for 60m? Pedros type is more sought after, and is why we faced more competition for him. Transfermarkt isn't perfect, but it's less biased than fans of the teams that the players are in.

No reason to compare signings against some of the biggest flops out there. If that's the standard, 80% of all signings are great deals, and not even just "okay/decent". Again, those clubs have a much higher budget than us, so they can pay more for the same players. Paying £40m is a bigger investment for us.

Because of price, and our tight budget. Honestly the stats you put out here doesn't actually scream of a great signing at £40m? Not sure what you mean. The other signings were obviously better, but Barnes is okay. Not saying it was a bad signing by any means, everything doesn't have to be either great or bad.

Do you mean the summer window in 2023 here? I thought it was okay. Barnes, Livra, Hall and Tonali turned out to be good signings. Barnes is the only questionable one due to price, but I don't think he was a bad signing either. We could not do that much more with the budget.

Yeah I never ever believed that. Then people saying he dived on purpose when he was trying to get Krul(?) sent off because he didn't want to score. I think that was all just protecting their mind from the reality that he wanted to leave his boyhood club for Liverpool. He went for the bag and the bigger team, like most do, and it was naive to think otherwise.

Here comes Hope: "Word from Edwards that the deal is done, followed by a vague message about not getting stressed. The club and Howe need to provide some clarity to this chaos."

Nusa has been fantastic for Norway, but I'm not sure he's a good fit for Eddie Howe with all the high pressing and defensive work required. I think some of the reason that he shines for Norway is that I think he has less defensive responsibility there than with Leipzig. Besides he's a left winger, we don't need that currently. Imo that link isn't very credible. Maybe the Xavi Simons link is more credible.

Chelseas scouting (done by Boehly himself): *Checks tranfer rumours online* *Googles "players wanted by top Premier League clubs"* *Watches some youtube highlights of those players* *Puts in bids for them at the quoted price from internet articles*

The way he talks about how managers can't come in and succeed with that squad stems from the narrative the media kept pushing about how Bruce was doing the best he could with a useless squad. We didn't have a great squad, but Bruce made it look so much worse. Just shows how those media narratives decides what many people think about teams that they don't follow closely themselves, and how it makes fans of other clubs delusional about us.

Havoc.

He was generally causing hammock for defenders that season, especially in the second half of the season. Lightning quick, even with the ball at his feet. He doesn't seem to have the same explosiveness anymore. Achilles injuries can be a nightmare.

Ask them for a bet. It will be humiliating for them when they lose. That's what I allways do in those situations.

That's what Ratcliffe would've done.

Can they only give a red if he actually catches the opponent doing that? He does endanger him. He should atleast have had a yellow you would think.

Same here, he must be mint then.

Lets atleast push the price up for them. Not that it matters though, they'll spent 400 mill, finish 4th and end up with more PSR headroom than before.

+ the money they are spending on Wirtz, which is nuts. Like 130m, isn't it?

They won't get more than 30m for him this summer, we thought..

Here comes Romano saying that Chelsea are in for him.

Didn't we hire a "transfer expert" for the first window? I can't remember the details. Edit: As revealed by The Athletic, Newcastle United’s new owners have appointed Nick Hammond as a temporary consultant ahead of the January transfer window.

What do you mean by "balance the books"? I suppose the budget that the owner has set? Because I saw an estimate of how much each club was allowed to spend within the PSR limits, and Brighton was top with a £300m headroom. Unrelated to the discussion, but I think Chelseas headroom was around the same, which is ridiculous.

I agree. Evidently buying players is often a long and complicated process. First you need to find the right replacement and the right profile, if you haven't already. Then you have to negotiate, which can be quite tedious as many clubs demand a high fee. You want to get both spot on. Every signing requires a lot of work. We will have to make some compromises.