S-Clarke

Is that all you've picked up on? It is a bang on article in all aspects.

tbf as one of the big clubs, Chelsea's recruitment has been a bit wtf in recent years, generally.

But remember Ralph already has these on his desk, he just needs to spell check them. 5 pledges. I wonder if one of them mentions single digits.

Well, hopefully we can make use of him deeper if he's willing to learn. But having a presence in the box will be a bonus for us. Bertrands crosses in particular are brilliant, but Cedric needs some work. We've been crying out for more height down the spine of this team for a while.

To be fair he doesn't speak English, so probably a bit harsh unleashing him on 20 or so sotonions! Still would be good to hear from him in terms of a statement though.

You'll need someone to keep an eye on Son, Eriksen and Ali too. Their movement is really, really fluid.

But the average players at the big clubs would probably be the best players at mid sized clubs. We're not signing washed up, they're still young. People like Lemina, Hojbjerg, Hoedt are still really young and have tons of growth.

I'm a little more reassured that this looks close, because attribute wise he's exactly what we need. A powerful, tall centre forward. Someone to play off of. I'm not condoning long ball, but you need options and you need someone to give the rest of the team the opportunity to push up - he may not score bags and bags of goals, but what he'll bring us in holding up the ball will allow us to get more from the rest of the side And our pacey wide player we seem to be targeting, who is also a 100% requirement for this team.

To be fair, Toby was a reserve player when we signed him. But I do get what you mean in a sense, but you also need to look at the clubs we're getting these players from. We're not going up to Celtic or Saltzburg, we're getting players from Bayern Munich, Juventus, Monaco, Napoli etc. They'll obviously be reserve players there as we wouldn't be able to get near a first team player. They may be reserves, but they're good quality reserves. It's up to the manager to build a good team, we don't have bad players.

Clearly heavily influenced by Pellegrino as he worked with him when he was manager at independiente (i think)

Yeah, I know that's the case. I'm not really expecting to see full financial details, but just some ideas of their plans wouldn't go amiss. To have such a large takeover and to hear nothing on the back of it is just odd. In a sense I'm glad they're not shouting from the rooftops like the Venky's, but there is another extreme to that - not actually saying anything! Will see how Ralph is getting on with those pledges soon I guess.

This is where we need a bit of transparency to be honest. If Gao has taken out loans to buy the club AGAINST the club he's buying, then we are ****ed. But I can't see that would be the case, surely the loans are against him and his company, rather than hooked onto the club? So fair enough, he may want to dip into the club to help repay them, but we shouldn't necessarily be seen as carrying that debt. Does need some clarification to be honest. Still waiting.

Yeah I saw that one yesterday. He has been a bit of a disaster at Milan if truth be told, but he has pedigree. It'll only be a loan though, not a buy, and I don't think the club are really looking at loans as priority options. We're just fluffing around unrealistic permanent transfers before we try and mop up the remaining loans left on the 31st, after we've failed to sign any of our unrealistic permanent transfers. (sorry, still being cynical)

It's the classic case of ''oh he's being sold, he's **** anyway'' ''oh we've missed out, he was too expensive anyway, better value in europe''. When the reality is for £20m there isn't a single player out their with his pedigree, attributes or experience in this league to get. Probably a choice of the player, but given the position we were in 2 seasons ago (finished 6th) we really could have had the pick of proper talent, but we decided to sell it all instead.

AR-10 aka Jack Schitt

Please don't give that guy the airtime.

Klarer is one to watch, potential to be a very, very good player.

I doubt Kat really cares, she's got her wedge now. Given what her father paid for us, it's paid her back in bundles.

I notice the U23's and U18's are also playing the 1 up top tactic. There really does seem to be a correlation throughout the entire club in terms of team shape and playing style. All well and good if it's working, but the U23's got relegated FFS and the first team is struggling. Someone needs to wake up.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that Gabbidani is a support striker, not a lone striker. However we as a club seem absolutley fixated on this one up to tactic at all levels, so we won't budge from that. MP needs to impose what he thinks fits, but you just get the impression that he has higher orders to adhere to, hence why he's not being sacked as no other f***ing manager would put up with it. Play him as a support player to someone like Carrillo and it would actually gleen some decent returns I think. But we'll probably get rid of him in order to get Carrillo, otherwise we'll end up with another 'log jam of strikers'. We don't want that.

No one.

We need someone similar to Theo still, if we haven't been able to get Theo that shouldn't mean the club close the door on a 'pacy' winger type. Let's hope we don't follow the stance of ''oh well, we couldn't get our main option, let's shut the door''. If our scouting is as good to be believed, then it should be able to find a player with similar attributes and ability to Theo for a similar sort of price (I'm thinking Quincy Promes or Pone Sisto off the top of my head) Don't think this is the time to try and be clever, we need to gamble and if that means spending a little more than we want to on proven players, then do it.

A hate the blame game in terms of individual blame, I think it's misguided to praise just one person when the going is good and by the same token it's misguided to direct all the blame at one person when the going is bad. We have done things well in the past, collectively as a club. Over the last 18 months we have taken our eye of the ball and have got a little too sure of ourselves, that comes across in our managerial appointments, PR slush in the press and our recruitment policy. We seem to still be living off of one transfer window, which let's be honest was a raving success for the club. Since then though our recruitment has been quite poor in my eyes, as the club have seemingly thought they had it all made so took their eyes off the prize. Collectively peoples heads need to be slammed together and they need to stop looking at what we did 3 years ago, thinking we can still follow the same principles now. Football changes, players change, demands change, our principles also need to change otherwise we will continue to go backwards.

He was alright in the League Cup game at Arsenal too, but that's it.

Ah dear. We're ''hopeful'' and 'calm' again.