By all accounts his age profile- 26, did not align with the clubs squad age recruitment policy.
The club currently will not sign players over 26 years old.
This does seem like a rather short sighted naive perspective on which to base the clubs essential aims of staying competitive with our rivals and maintaining C/L status.
It may seem like a sensible strategy on the books, but its not very bright
It blatantly does not acknowledge & accept that the squad requires a balance of leadership, experience, age & youth in which to create an eco system in which the squad/ club can maintain a competitive edge, & develop its youth prospects.Whilst simultaneously achieving steady financial growth within its asset value & also staying FFP compliant. yeah, you've got to play by the rules. Bend them stretch them ok.
This development process requires experienced oversight combined subtle careful management and a realistic awareness of actually what the club and squad needs at the time to maintain this eco system:
All of which does seem to have been absent, despite the new ownerships efforts.
The new owners have been in place for three transfer windows and are now going into the 5th match of their second season.
A huge amount has said about their novel approach to how they have run the club in the last 16 months.
They have by their own admission made numerous key strategic mistakes ( blunders imo is more apt)
They have gone against the perceived common sense essential parameters of how best to ensure that their clubs stays competitive and maintain its status which had been built up over the previous 20 years.
When they came in they announced, that they are serious, that they have a process and that this will take time.
Well whats not to like about that announcement?
The reality is significantly different, the only iota of realism in that announcement is it will take time.
But , time for what?
As to being serious, well ok,
1: if they mean because they bought the club for 2.5 bln , (with an assurance to invest a further 1,75 bln of the clubs generated revenue back into the club over the next 10 years) that again seems like good news.
But does that actually mean that they are going to load the club with 1.75 bln worth of debt and over the next 10 years & use the club as a cash cow?
A bit like the glazers imo.
In the three windows to date they have already put the club into just over 1bln worth of debt with their , i hate to say it scatter gun approach.
I really dislike this term, but after 4 games into their second season, with the astronomical figure spent, the club have made solid individual signings, players with future potential, but have they brought in the right range of players which will secure a 5th place finish ?
Going by the first 4 games results and looking more importantly at the levels of our rivals, it seems like we are way off the pace and short of immediate solutions as we still have not secured a goal scorer, we do not have a world class goal keeper and we are lacking players with leadership experience to guide the younger players , when the squad is effected by injury, & when we are behind and so on.
How did the owners get to this point?
What was their process, personally i think their process changed when the club lost its C/L status, that changed everything for them.
But with out doubt that was of their own doing.
They took the club back 20 years in the first 12 months of their tenure.
But unfathomably they have continued to misread the situation, the age profile policy is a perfect example of their totally inept approach.
Going forward?
Wow, personally i like the squad, but it is full of unknowns and lacks 2/3 players of tried and tested EPL experience, the like of players like Maddison ect.
This season, its clear that until Poch can get his first 11 functioning it going to be a very bumpy road, how long will this take ?
James, Nkunku & Fofana i would assume are all key to that aim.
COY Blues, KTBFFH<
Maddison refused by Chelsea due to his age?
posted on 5/9/23
comment by Afc1989 (U21076)
posted 1 hour, 11 minutes ago
Their transfer model pretty much depends on resale values.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you resale a player on a 7 year contract being paid loads of money?
These prospects can sit on their contracts until their early 30s... no resale value there.
Surely Chelsea will want to keep the players that are a hit, it will be impossible to move on the flops
posted on 5/9/23
comment by Sporty and Portly - LFC (U8531)
posted 46 seconds ago
comment by Afc1989 (U21076)
posted 1 hour, 11 minutes ago
Their transfer model pretty much depends on resale values.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you resale a player on a 7 year contract being paid loads of money?
These prospects can sit on their contracts until their early 30s... no resale value there.
Surely Chelsea will want to keep the players that are a hit, it will be impossible to move on the flops
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A) Saudi
B) you just pick up loan fees and get the wages off the book
Don’t forget Chelsea have been supplementing this business by also selling academy graduates as they show as pure profit - Mount, Colwill and they were open to selling Gallagher.
posted on 5/9/23
comment by Striketeam7 - There used to be a football club over there (U18109)
posted 32 minutes ago
comment by Sporty and Portly - LFC (U8531)
posted 46 seconds ago
comment by Afc1989 (U21076)
posted 1 hour, 11 minutes ago
Their transfer model pretty much depends on resale values.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you resale a player on a 7 year contract being paid loads of money?
These prospects can sit on their contracts until their early 30s... no resale value there.
Surely Chelsea will want to keep the players that are a hit, it will be impossible to move on the flops
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A) Saudi
B) you just pick up loan fees and get the wages off the book
Don’t forget Chelsea have been supplementing this business by also selling academy graduates as they show as pure profit - Mount, Colwill and they were open to selling Gallagher.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Their old model was very successful the new one clearly has much more risk in it.
We've already seen players refuse loans and transfers this will only get worse. Loan deals won't cover the wages Chelsea are paying, at best they will have to pay a proportion of them.
Saudi is an option but no guarantee there.
I'm not saying it won't work but the potential flaws in the policy are very clear to see
posted on 5/9/23
God bless Toddy B
Maddison has settled in very well
posted on 5/9/23
comment by Striketeam7 - There used to be a football club over there (U18109)
posted 3 hours, 9 minutes ago
Boehly thought by buying 20 of the hottest young prospects in football, about half are bound to pan out - but football doesn’t work like that. The players have to be right for the club as well - look at Eriksen, De Bruyne, Salah - all with Chelsea at one point but never made it there.
Injury, form, personality, confidence - all these things can stop the players with the very highest potential from succeeding at any one club
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eriksen was at chelsea!?
posted on 5/9/23
I get the idea of wanting young players in your squad but 26 is still young and footballers can last for longer than they did in previous eras. Just an unnecessarily impractical and ageist way of looking at it really.
posted on 5/9/23
comment by Spurtle (U1608)
posted 23 minutes ago
I get the idea of wanting young players in your squad but 26 is still young and footballers can last for longer than they did in previous eras. Just an unnecessarily impractical and ageist way of looking at it really.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It is, but for Chelsea to amortise the deal the same way they have for the likes of Lavia, by the time his contract would be close to expiring, his resale value would be nowhere near as high.
posted on 5/9/23
Haven't agree with the owners approach on recruitment from the beginning, pretty much everything has been wrong.
(a) allowing a manager to play DoF & sign almost everyone he wants - fee & wages immaterial. Risky strategy anyway but if you do it, maybe keep said manager for longer than a week after the transfer window shuts. It's like going all in then leaving the table before the hands even dealt, makes zero sense.
(b) Going the opposite direction & hiring a thousand recruitment "experts" (which is unnecessary, imo, in itself), then only signing players who any passive Football Manager or FIFA fan could've told you about... but with a plan you see, because they're all young
(c) Not overloading players in sink with the mass inflex of players creating perpetual imbalances in the squad + giving the manager a really hard job trying to maintain morale & establish camaraderie on the pitch.
Lot of grandiose gestures & statements, little substance.
posted on 5/9/23
Some of the subtleties of football management will be lost on corporate bods like Boehly. They're used to seeing an issue and solving it with money.
In the footballing world, you cannot throw together players like some sort of globe trotters team.
You cannot just buy players based on quality or potential without doing due diligence on their mentality/attitude etc.
You can look at players like NDombele at Spurs, may be Snacho at United and see a ton of talent but a sucky or fragile mentality.
If you give a young player a ton of money and a huge 8 year contract, you will likely never get the best out of him. That player is set for life, where is the hunger. They really need to have a seriously strong winning attitude and desire to succeed, otherwise they can easily just be a passenger and take home their £15m a year win lose or draw.
If you take this approach across a lot of the squad then the chances of it failing are even greater .
We have seen player power at Chelsea see off managers, successful managers like Jose. These players all on long contracts and big wages are almost immoveable. If anything has to give its the manager and then the new man is stuck with the same problem.
To me Boehly seems to have this American view of transfers, like their drafting system...but in this league you dont have to wait your turn to make your pick, you can just pick all the best ones by bidding the highest. He must be like "wow! dont Forest (17th) get to choose who to buy first?" "You mean we can just buy them all? sweet! lets do that!"
posted on 5/9/23
comment by Nickasaurus (U9257)
posted 3 hours, 37 minutes ago
comment by Striketeam7 - There used to be a football club over there (U18109)
posted 3 hours, 9 minutes ago
Boehly thought by buying 20 of the hottest young prospects in football, about half are bound to pan out - but football doesn’t work like that. The players have to be right for the club as well - look at Eriksen, De Bruyne, Salah - all with Chelsea at one point but never made it there.
Injury, form, personality, confidence - all these things can stop the players with the very highest potential from succeeding at any one club
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eriksen was at chelsea!?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
He was very much on Chelsea’s radar as a youngster and had 2 trials with them:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/christian-eriksen-reveals-nearly-joined-6957451.amp