Mark Kelly

I'm not seeing an awful lot of love for Moses here which is surprising considering how excellent he was , especially before he started to look a bit leggy as the season drew to a close , especially considering how much praise Conte lavished on him throughout the season.

That is in my opinion a huge mistake.

I'm hoping we're all missing something and that something is a large influx of youth team players given a fighting chance of a crack at the Premier League. Not all at the same time , maybe the odd one here or there so that by the end of the year two or three of them could point to 15 or so games each .It'd be nice. I'm certain Chalobah can replace Matic without a noticeable drop off in quality and would dearly love Baker and RLC to get a good go too.

I know we hoped we'd strengthen over the close season but so far it looks like we're selling Costa and replacing him with Lukaku , Selling Matic and replacing him with Bakoyoko , selling Ake and replacing him with Sandro . Where's the "fighting on four fronts , strengthening " then? Surely not another season where the board think they're doing a great job of backing the manager by weakening the depth of the squad , please ? We need numbers as well as upgrades.

You may want to be asking Eddie Howe about this from reports I've seen !

You've totally misunderstood . I'm listing him because he's a left back we've bought , along with the others on the list , spending millions in the process , chasing what appears to be the "holy grail" of left backs across the seasons. I think Alonso was one of the players of the year and we require back up for him , not a replacement. As for what's wrong with him , l can only think his lack of explosive pace , personally.

The problem is , we never have since Ash , £50m is a snip if we don't need to buy the equivalents of Del Horno , Rahman , Bertrand , Alonso etc. On a never ending quest to get a new one .

Well , left back , left wing , practically interchangeable these days . I'm with you though , I don't think Alonso needs an upgrade , Cahill and Matic possibly but not Alonso , however Conte is a clever one , he probably has a cunning plan.

Maybe the plan is to replace Hazard not Alonso ? At least for the first few weeks of the season.

Manchester evening news reporting that Matic has agreed personal terms with United and we are waiting to hear their offer once we get Bakayoko in. That'll please someone.

And of course , these "pet" reporters could also be used to supply a smokescreen to make everyone think we're after Van Dijk as we switch our attention to Manolas etc. Or to ensure we ramp up the money that our rivals have to pay if they want the player we are "after".

Lets buy Dalbert !

Wow ! He want's to go back to Athletico Madrid ? Why didn't he say something ?

I'm a massive fan of Costa , when he's not got the hump he's as good as it gets , however , the media have made it almost an impossible task to play him as they spend all their time demonizing him , leading to the usual weak willed referees too scared to let him play his game and ignoring all the kicks and pulls and digs coming at him from the defence . Lukaku is a good player but I cannot get past the mental weakness of running away when his competition was Torres the inept and Old man river Etoo. Lewandowski , I have to be totally honest of only really ever seen him play in European national games for Poland and have never been overly impressed but he has also given me the impression that he's the kind of player the opposition would think had died during the game only to pop up in the last quarter and get a hattrick. My original post was just an attempt at humour regarding the Costa- Conte text gate affair more than anything. In an ideal world I'd stick with Costa but we'll end up with Lukaku because out of the three options he does appear to actually want to play for Chelsea and good luck to him , he's improved as a player and I have enough regard for Conte to believe he'll work him until he knows exactly whats expected of him and reap the benefit. I watched some footage of GNR and was thrilled to see Slash doing what he's best at and back where he's not selling himself short but chortled merrily at the girth of Axl who looked like a tubby version of Keith Lemon.

You always were classy.