Dwmh

Injury prone and not playing far forward to use his real skills - it is RLC again. At least easy to see parallels.

Interesting. But it does seem the club is still generating players more than good enough for the Prem.

Who says there has been no contract offer? We only know that none has been signed and announced. Connor may have rejected 3 offers already. My sympathies are with Conor not the club, and I reckon he is better off with a big 4 year contract elsewhere than a smaller 8 year contract here. Also better off in a club that wants to play him CM rather than doing all the pressing. Comparisons with Mount btw are a bit odd. There is only 14m aged difference and Conor is nowhere near the level that Mount was over 2020-22 - except in our hearts.

I doubt it does now. Trossard Bisouma and Cucurella were sold over a year ago, and typically deals are done half up front half a year later so a lot of that £70m (which was leant to replace bank debt) will have been covered by now. + compensation for er Potter. Then Brighton sold MacCallister, Sanchez and Caicedo summer 2023, so a chunk of that will have been paid already. He could well have started taking cash out now. And Brighton's ability to fund new purchases must be enormous right now. 15/16. OK one year.

I don't want him here (mind I think next year is no better than this year, so my sympathies are for him, others maybe more optimistic). I'm just going through Poch's choices. Does anyone think we can buy Tarkowski for next season? Is that an option the club might offer Poch or next Poch. TT, poTTer, poTTerino, PisspoTTerino?

Well if you want all youth you are certainly at the right club. I suspect Poch wants some experience there.

Funny that is precisely the same interview quoted in the Mirror piece I linked to. He is quite determined NOT to hint what will happen. Some hack just decides to write the headline one way all the same, and some readers choose to read the headline and not follow the text. Last season an extension was announced in February. Pretty sure it won't be any earlier this season so we will find out in the next month. (Sorry, I know that uncertainty is the enemy of the "football expert". That is why all these newspaper stories and Spotrac are there. Punters have less uncertainty to deal with making it easier for us all to pretend we know what is going on. Doesn't make predictions any more accurate, but it makes us a lot more certain we are right!)

unfortunately 100% is no better than 50/50 from any of your sources, Max. Well quite. When a player has made 25 starts by md Feb he usually can count on another season. And it is not as if his wife has already gone off to Brazil with the kids.

I dunno. Was that the club talking, his missus or one of the "more reliable" twitterati? If it is from this story https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/thiago-silva-chelsea-future-contract-31956530 then it sounds like he is doing his absolute best to avoid giving a hint while the media are doing their best to read something into it.

I recall a city joke from the 1980s when Americans were trying to get a toehold in London Banking How do you buy a small Merchant Bank? Buy a Big Merchant Bank and wait.

True. Which in turn makes it even more likely he'll be back next season!

Not sure but he has started 26 out of 33 games (22/24 PL) and quite a few of teh games missed were non-PL oppo. Colwill has not been sub much but Badiashile has been a PL sub 8 tmes though rarely used - perhaps not 100% fit (plenty of room on the bench). Certainly Silva was rested a lot more last year but then there were plenty of adults in the room last year. Azpi and Koulibaly for starters.

So once breaks for injury or non-selections are considered, Disasi (22 PL starts todate) will have almost a full season in the Prem by next year, Badiashile(16) Just over half a season, Fofana (48) just over a season if he returns, Colwill (31) about 1 season, with presumably Chalobah (35) gone. Not much actual PL experience there. I guess that is why Poch keeps picking Silva.

Oh yes - they came to quite the wrong club for the apparent plan.

Well I'd have said Brighton and Strasbourg are great models to follow. You can do exactly the same as has been done with Chelsea and save your self almost £2billion upfront investment at the same time. Starting with a 74 point team and promising more success was where they went wrong.

You don't think it was because Fofana was known to be out for the season? He did the ACL some time weeks before we bought Disasi who was unusual amongst our summer 2023 purchases. Only Disasi, Sanchez and Nkunku (all 25 in the summer) could be described as players for this season rather than projects for the longer term or at least investments in youth. I doubt Disasi would have been bought if it were thought that the 23 yo Fofana would be available. If he was always in the plan as an alternate for Silva then why did we do nothing when we lost 2 CBs in Fofana and Chalobah? It seems to me a fit Fofana would have left us in exactly the same situation. Anyway I certainly say that Silva was not expected to have played 29 starts already. But we got left short handed all over the pitch except at keeper.

Yes still special I agree. Also people forget that he rarely played full seasons. 9 PL seasons, 254 appearances including 67 subbed on and 60 subbed off and 17250 mins total That is 21.6 starts or 21.3 x90mins per season. He was sharing striking duties with Gudjohnson, Crespo, Sheva, Torres and Costa frequently rotating with them and invariably looking the better player. 1 goal every 168 minutes is not shabby.

Wes Fofana hasn't played since June Internationals and his ACL means he was never in contention for this season. No doubt if he had been fit in August we wouldn't have signed Disasi on Aug 4th. So the real missed player is probably Chalobah who last played Aug 3rd (same date as Nkumku's last game pre-long term injury) All well in advance of the September window closing. The only late departures were CHO and loanees like Lukaku and Ziyech who can be presumed to be planned loans and Kepa and we now have 4 keepers.. We have the squad that board wanted, they had a month's notice of how small and inexperienced it was going to be.

A lot was made of the Caicedo foul (with clips provided) in the match day forum. Still looks like Caicedo had lost the ball to the first Palace player and was actually blocking the 2nd one who had a much more realistic chance of getting to the ball. The crowd surfing is another big Reffing issue I brought up in the match day thread - another area where refs have been lenient to us yet still we have record numbers of yellows. https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_yel_card?se=578 3.1 yellows a game is quite new territory, I don't think anyone has got beyond 2.6 a game over a season before and only Sheff U (obvs) and Villa are above it this season.

Actually Fair rebuttal. You didn't - it was a few others.

Respect his PR advisor cetainly. If he was genuinely in a conflict with the board over Gallagher we would never hear of it. This is just someone trying to position themselves ahead of good or bad newsflow. Both in respect of fans and in respect of players (who I guess are even more concerned about the clubs wage controls than the fans)

I partly agree, but the minimum we should demand is consistency and they have been booking players for actually touching members of the crowd for about 20 years (I recall Robben being booked for it). Removing shirts (Fernandez recently) i'm er on the fence about. But going bare chest in front of an oppo crowd is certainly provocative, and I recognise that some are less tolerant about a political message revealed than i am. So there is the rule and it should be applied consistently or changed. Going into the crowd though, or just leaning over and hugging fans seems pretty clear cut though. Crowds aren't as difficult as they once were, and front row seats i presume come at premium prices now. But all the same it can't be condoned during the game (though perhaps post match). Maybe we were "let off" by a commonsense approach by the referee. In which case we should give thanks, take note and use that to offset the occasions where refs don't do that (or use a commonsense approach to other clubs). But the real message is the reason for the table below is NOT PMGOL but CFC players (and coaching). https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_yel_card?se=578 77 and 9th in all 22/23 63 and 10th in all 21/22

As @Hamhas just shown - if there is widespread concern about an incident there will be a load of clips put up on hte internet and a google search will find one very quickly. Not sure quite why you think being able to find or create a clip is such an elitist skill. Loads of people manage to do it. But that is simply the way it works for every club, and given that no club has received as many penalties as us, we are doing ok. VAR decisions for or overruling pens happen all the time. Well not really, so I wonder why you need to state it given you have been arguing very strongly without a clip that you were right about the penalty. Hurray and Thanks. not a great clip, it looks like a mobile phone clip (so that is why they use them!). So i guess there isn't much discussion on the topic out there on the WWW. But a day or so on we can (as Chara suggested) discuss the replays of actual incidents without the adrenaline. Me too.

Absolutely. Which is why today would be a great time to look at a replay clip and discuss that rather than continuing on adrenaline without it. Lots of doubt. So I tend to stick to matters of fact and avoid nicey nicey quotes from ex-players being pally or distracting from harsh realities like money. Basing arguments on facts make it a lot easier. Still I am quite nervous that someone will put up a clip of the penalty incident that shows a clear ref and VAR error. It wouldn't quite prove me wrong as I haven't an opinion on the "penalty". But it would take the conversation on from yesterdays adrenaline and prove other people's point. They could treat it as bragging rights for themselves which is fair enough. And I do regularly recognise when people have informed me of something I didn't know. Meanwhile I'll point to the clip in the match thread someone put up on the "foul on Caicedo" where I disagree with many but the evidence was at least put up and the people making the claim of foul are actually "sharing views given the ability to check replays with out the adrenaline..." as Chara points out. People can decide for themselves on that. It is what the next day is for.

^^ So it was Gallagher's 2nd and he should have been booked as well. perhaps he was lookng for his 3 Chelsea fan Brothers and Dad as revealed in the TNT documentary on the Gallagher family I glimpsed a few minutes of yesterday. Wish I could find a link to it or find a repeat time. But when I looked up Gallagher family TV, all the links were to "Shameless"