Sleeping Dave

We can easily play 343 with a very attacking outlook but it's not sustainable because we don't have the numbers. Untilnwe have 5 serious AMs and 3 strikers it's merely an academic discussion. We are 3 players short (4 if you accept Bats is useless).

From your armchair, four years on. Why even bother Paul? You know what it takes for a player to play, he just didn't deliver.

Although that wasn't the question I asked, I agree he wants FFP to stay. But why doesn't he do what City's owners are doing? Why doesn't he make up fake sponsorships etc?

Wasn't sure where to put this, but just read the following article on chelseafc.com with the following quote from Conte; Seems like he plans to use a front three of Hazard, Pedro and Willian as his back-up plan when Morata is out injured/suspended. It also seems like he hasn't abondoned the 343 completely and if Willian continues his sharp rise in form, then I can't see how he wouldn't continue with the 343 from last season. Imo our best starting XI is; Courtois; Azpilicueta, Christensen, Cahill; Moses, Fabregas, Kanté, Alonso; Willian, Morata, Hazard This is a fantastic starting point which makes it even more baffling we eff it up all the time. With this as a base together with Rüdiger, Luiz, Zappacosta, Drinkwater, Bakayoko, Caballero and Pedro - we are 4-5 players away from having a fantastic squad. Imagine; GK: Courtois, Caballero, GK3 (HG) CB: Azpilicueta, Christensen (HG), Cahill (HG*), Rüdiger, Luiz, Ampadu (U-21) RWB: Moses (HG*), Zappacosta LWB: LWB1, Alonso CM: Kanté, Fabregas (HG*), Bakayoko, Drinkwater (HG*) AM: Hazard, AM2, Willian, Pedro, AM5, Loftus-Cheek (HG) S: Morata, S2, Abraham (HG) Sandro, a top class AM and a PL class AM topped up with a very good striker.

I sort of answrered this in another thread. So maybe we can spare the forum a repeat of that here as well. But the FFP is a joke yes. But one has to ask why Roman isn't pulling the same trick City's owners are doing?

Oh I'm not saying that the claim doesn't have merit. I do think that both Mourinho and Conte think they didn't have enough say or that the money men (woman) were too tight with money/we were too slow to close deals/whatever. I'm also fairly certain that Emenalo and (mainly) his scouts were responsible for keeping tabs on players across the continent so that they could add alternatives to the names the manager had identified. My perception of how this works (contacts with the scouting network at Chelsea through a friend in the business, reading beween the lines in interviews and connecting the dots with some logical reasoning) is that the club (Marina and her team) communicates what money the manager can spend. We have seen the loan army generating considerable funds over the last two summers. I imagine that goes into the pot of funds available. We should also remember the amortisation of player cost (transfer fee) plus wages which can be a considerable amount for a player like Morata. Then I imagine that the manager/first team coach and Emenalo talk about the squad on an on-going basis to identify areas where we need to buy outside talent. I imagine that both Conte and Emenalo proposes names to the list and that they simply rank them from top to bottom based on who's the first choice etc. Emenalo's names coming from the vast player database the Chelsea scouting team has amassed over the years while Conte's names comes from his experience of them in some way. Then the list is given to Marina and her team who then proceed, with or without help from Emenalo (some conflicting stories on this one - but the most common idea is that Emenalo has an active role in some negotiations with agents) while the manager/first team coach has nothing to do with this process unless it's to contact the player and convince him he's in his plans (Fabregas and Costa examples of this). I imagine that we negotiate with multiple parties for the same squad role in order to play them out over one another to get the best value. I also think that this is the reason why we leave it quite late in the windows these days. A strategy that isn't working great to be fair in this sellers market. Anyhow, that's my picture of this this works. Well worked to be honest, Emenalo isn't here so I'm not sure if there's anyone proposing names to Contes targets for the coming window. Or if that had already been done by Emenalo before he left. Maybe I'm off my rocker. Maybe I'm right or perhaps somewhere in between. But I'm fairly certain that the manager has a big say in who the actual targets are. Just look at the players we've bought since Conte signed. Alonso? Morata? Zappcosta? All three has Conte written all over it. Luiz, Bats, Kante, Drinkwater, Bakayoko fees more like "Emenalo" signings (for lack of a better word). Applying it to previous signings/managers... Scolari and Deco. Mourinho and Drogba/Carvalho/Ferreira/Tiago etc etc.

Emenalo got flack because he was ultimately responsible for the recruitment at the club. That much is clear. Was he alone? No of course not, Marina would have been telling the manager and Emenalo what funds were available and then Emenalo and his scouts would find the targets we should go after. Recruitment, the loan army and the scouting was his responsibilities. Not sure why people claim it's unclear. Conte keeps saying a lot of things that isn't necessarily relevant - like he doesn't have a big enough squad (while not using the players he does have in the first place). But maybe you are right. Maybe Emenalo had nothing to do with signings and maybe Conte (or whoever is the manager) doesn't either. I suppose it's Bruce Buck and Marina who travels around the world to find our next player. Or not.

The facts were presented above. He doesn't miss anyone he has sold bar maybe Matic. The rest he had no intention of keeping. It's very worrying he's found a way to spend £300m on new players and we are regressing as a team. He's got a truck load of money to spend and he's mostly spent that on fillers who doesn't make us materially better. Those are the facts whether you like it or not.

So did JM. How many here are blaming the club for selling Lukaku, Salah or KDB? No one is the answer. Of course the manager has a say in who's signed and who's sold. Just because JM didn't want to sell them, doesn't mean he didn't agree to let them go after they made their feelings known.

Yes, yes of course. It's a no-brainer.

1) Pure guess-work. The fact remains, we have bought a grand total of two attacking players since Conte took over. Bats and Morata while he sold two of our stand-out players Matic and Costa. I'm at loss for how this cannot be attributed to Conte. It's extremely far-fetched to believe the club buys players randomly without asking the manager what he needs. There has been an extraordinaly unhealthy focus on DMs and CBs since Conte took over. I attribute that to him and him alone. 2) Yes - he's certainly guilty of that and it's also a direct reason to why most squad players asks to move on. They aren't used. 1) We have invested in his idea. £200m spent on defensive players and another £100m spent on attacking ones. His focus isn't on building a squad with attacking depth. It's pretty obvious at this stage. 2) Disagree. We had a chance to build on last season and add 2-3 attacking players and build from that. Instead we bought 4 defensive players and Morata and a back-up keeper. Spectacularly misguided. He's spent £300m and sold players he either; 1) had never ever used (Cuadrado, Solanke, Atsu, Traoré, Salah, Djilobodji, Marin, Bamford - £45m to £70m depending on what you believe Salah was sold for) 2) had used extremely sparsely despite signs they were good enough to be squad players (Aké, Chalobah, Oscar, Mikel - £75m) 3) didn't like for whatever reason (Costa - £40m) 4) Potentially wanted to keep (Matic - £40m) It's utterly ridiculous to harp on about net spend when the outgoings where all players that he didn't use, had never used or didn't use very much. It's not a loss in his world and he can only blame himself for re-investing £155m of that on players he currently aren't using that much either (Rudiger, Zappacosta, Drinkwater, Bats, Luiz). Last season we had 22 outfielders (seniors) who played at some stage last season. Only 15 started in 5 PL games or more (of which three of them was Ivanovic, Oscar and Terry who basically didn't play after September).That means at the end of the season, we had 12 outfielders with 5 PL starts or more. 12. Utilizing his squad? No, just no. Our second striker doesn't even have 5 PL starts across two seasons ffs. Hopefully the club won't back Conte to the tune of hundreds of millions unless the money is invested in; 1) players he actually wants to use 2) players that are attackers As it stands, I don't think Conte deserves more money to spend. He has overseen the purchase or addition of 65% of the current squad yet he only use a small number of them regularly. Why are we spending millions on players that doesn't make us better? Why are we spending millions on replacing average squad players with other, more expensive average squad players? Why are we not buying attackers (you were right, because he don't think we need them!)? Stop making excuses for him zaffo. You called it right this summer so why not take credit for that? Just because you and Conte was wrong doesn't mean it wasn't his intention. It absolutely was his intention and now he has a squad he wants yet still doesn't utilize. Time for him to walk the walk.

No I'm not. I just disagree with you. But everything has to be agenda-driven to you doesn't it? Chalobah has been our brightest academy product for years. He showed he was good enough (clearly good enough) to be a squad player for us. We didn't have any need to buy another CM and the only reason why we did was because we let go of Chalobah and Matic. Conte could have said to Nate that you'll be 4th choice CM and I'll play three DMs regularly. That would have meant playing time for him. Even in the 343 Nate would have gotten time as long as Conte would have decided to actually use his squad - something he still doesn't do while bitching about having a small squad. But Conte didn't want that did he? He wanted to send Nate on another pointless loan and obviously Nate didn't want part of that since he had already showed his credentials. You don't transfer and become a starting player for a mid-table team if you're not PL ready - he clearly is and PL ready players is something we don't really have an abundance of is it? Keeping Nate would have saved us at least £40m that we could have used for buying an attacker. Instead we have gotten rid of two academy products that are PL players and players that would be comparably cheap in salary. It's a derivative of the inane strategy of stock-piling CBs and DMs for no reason at all. Nothing you say will make me change my mind on this. It's a huge Conte blunder and a blunder that has had a big impact on the squad composition. Add Matic, Costa and very likely Luiz and a pattern starts to emerge. Next in line is surely Willian and maybe even Pedro. Why should they be content to sit on the bench when they are among our best players? I'm sure Conte will find a suitable DM and CB to replace them with. Edit: Regarding Ake - how can he be 6th choice CB when we only have five? Could we have saved £70m by not buying Bakayoko/Drinkwater and Rudiger? How much have those players actually played and could the £70m we spent on them have been spent on attacking players? How much has Drinkwater and Rudiger actually played and have either contributed more than Ake and Nate would have done and is that improvement (if any!) really worth £70m? The bleeding obvious answer is yes - £70m could have been spent much better and no, Rudiger and Drinkwater isn't £70m plus much higher wages better than Ake and Nate. It's hysterical cause you are the one who complains we don't spend enough. Maybe Conte should spend money on players who make a difference and keep the cheap PL players we already have. That's how you build a proper squad - not by replacing average players with other, much more expensive average players.

You know it's not the same thing at all. Conte didn't want to keep Chalobah - he wanted to send him on his what, 7th loan despite showing he was good enough to play for us. Its not the same situation. Ake the same. These are academy products. Of course they'd stayed if they thought they'd be squad players. But said players hardly play in a Conte squad - just ask Willian, Pedro or Bats. Or Drinkwater!

True - Luiz was spectacular last season as the CB in a middle three. Essentially the position is perfect for him. He gets time on the ball, doesn't have to man-mark anyone and is controlling the build-up phase from the back. Problem for Luiz is that Christensen quite clearly showed from day one that he is the future. He backed up his talent and promise with performances on the pitch. It would be criminal to play Luiz ahead of Christensen although I'd be sad to see him (Luiz) leave. But maybe he's too expensive to be a back-up CB and selling him would probably be the right thing to do (as long as the fee is re-invested in an AM and not another CB/DM).

Of course, makes sense now haha. I thought you were just listing various players and not started by "hey Dave listen" kind of thing. Agreed - no need to choose. The club has done that for us already and someday someone else will be chosen instead of Conte.