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[Sparked_26]

Benteke would have been a good fit at Chelsea when he joined Liverpool or even from Liverpool.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

Palace are crap. BigZ knows this. They play zero football. Absolutely zero and never have the ball.

Even when they were winning did anyone think they were good?

Some teams can churn out results but still be rubbish.

Palace are the standard bearer in that regard.

They’re f.ucking awful

[F l i c k e r]

Palace tried to play football once and it was a disaster (Frank de Boer).

I know we talk a lot of Premier League in here but this Milan Derby has been something else.

[F l i c k e r]

Looks like Chelsea have wrapped up Hakim Ziyech for 40m euro.

On top of that, Ajax's goalkeeper, Andre Onana said he only wants to join Chelsea.

On the come up we are.

[Outworn]

Nice capture of Hakim Ziyech if the report is indeed true.

Don't think we will be getting "Havana... Onana..."

[Sparked_26]

All confirmed.

That is a proper A list signing.

That’s what they need to do now. If you have to wait you have to wait. If he came now it would help us achieve 4th but tbh - who cares?

The aim has to be to win the league again in a few years. No short term fixes like Arsenal have done for years.

Of course it doesn’t always work out. Last class A egg was Jorginho and I’m still not convinced by him.

I hope Ziyech is someone Lampard or probably more importantly Cech has identified. We need players who are obviously quality and will outlast the manager if he doesn’t succeed.

As a Frank fan. This is a free hit this season. Next season is his first real season with hopefully a real team.

He’s done a great job this year bedding in youth but in terms of real Chelsea manager pressure. It begins next season

On Ziyech his set piece delivery destroyed us at the Bridge. He’s going make Kepa even worse unfortunately.

A week in training facing that? Kepa will be shaking like a s.hitting dog on match day.

We need a real goalkeeper and left back and for a me a defensive midfielder, a striker and another winger.

So we’ll see how we do

[Sparked_26]

For me I’d go:

Heaton/Pope/Henderson
Chilwell/Telles
Kalvin Phillips
Sancho (blank cheque book job)
Pukki or Ollie Watkins

Think we can be creative. There are some real quality players in the championship now which Chelsea know of as that was the experience base for a lot of our first team now

[F l i c k e r]

Onana is a possible upgrade on Kepa.

Marina and whoever else chose Kepa dropped the ball on his transfer completely.

I looked back at his time in Bilbao. The guy was a **** average goalkeeper his only 2 seasons of top flight football. He actually finished 16th place before moving to Chelsea and conceded 49(!) goals.

He was never great and was never going to become great at Chelsea.

Actually, I'm just going to blame marina. I think since Emenalo left, she's only made transfers of men with faces that she'd ****. Literally, all the transfers she's made since are men with pretty faces and questionable footballing ability. (Morata, Jorginho, Pulisic, Kepa: ...all her solo signings) (though I think Pulisic has quality)

Signing Ziyech and possibly Onana, I'm chalking up to Cech knowing football and not caring about handsomeness.

[F l i c k e r]

Those striker shouts are spot on as well.

I can't count how many times I've seen online people mentioning Jovic and all these overhyped nonsense strikers in the mold of Morata that have never encountered adversity.

I'd honestly take a punt on Danny Ings. Injury history or not, he'd push Tammy to improve or be a perennial backup. Because Ings is a work horse striker. Grit enhanced by skill, unlike signings like Morata who have unrefined talent with zero tenacity.

I like Lucas Digne more than Chilwell though. Digne is underrated. He's 3rd on crosses behind only TAA and De Bruyne, and he's better than Chilwell at defending, plus has a high aerial duel win rate. Crazy really but he'll be impossible to buy with Carlo there now.

[Sparked_26]

I think the amount of data available is huge now. Some of it useless but a lot of good.

Buendia at Norwich is a fine, fine player. Second most in the league for created chances behind De Bruyne. That’s not a hype stat, the point of the game is to create shooting chances to score goals. That’s the whole point

Norwich will likely finish bottom but with Aarons, Cantwell, Buendia, and Pukki they have four quality players. Arguably better than anything Sheff United have.

I think when there is a real grade A guy you have to go all in - like Sancho. But there is some real quality players out there with experience and literal quantifiable quality playing in the same league or Within English footy - no brainer.

Chelsea bought Kepa because Sarri wanted a keeper who could pass a football and that is the metric that someone at Chelsea fed into a database and it spat out Kepa after Oblak turned us down.

[Caught Square]

Fair play to UEFA actually banning city for the next two years, I didn’t think anything like that would happen.

They’ll obviously appeal to delay it but the fact they are taking action in the first place is good.