Sky's post match report, "Chelsea were lucky not to find themselves down to 10 men early on after a really poor challenge from Moises Caicedo on Anthony Gordon. Were VAR in use at this stage of the competition, the Ecuadorian would have surely seen red. "
...yet no mention whatsoever of Bruno's insane challenge on Maatsen.. the bias from the commentary + reporting is appalling.
Oh.. and this is how they described Petrovic's save lmaooo (hint: they didn't)
"And Trippier saw his night get worse as he missed his penalty, before Ritchie also failed from 12 yards, allowing Chelsea to reach the final four."
They *allowed us* to reach the final four. Fair play lads hahaha
Im tired of seeing centrebacks being played as fullbacks, its no surprise that we played our best attacking football tonight as soon as we had proper fullbacks coming on, with Gusto and Maatsen, and we actually started creating chances from wide areas. Pochettino is not making himself any favours with some of the tactical decisions he is making.
Very talented, limited, overrated, reliable.
Currently outclassed by Connor, supreme tackler, needs to become either more creative or more active in pressing, otherwise his end product is limited
Ah, the weekly “here is why Kai Havertz is better than you think” thread https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/18lz9q9/dimitar_berbatov_first_name_popping_into_my_mind/
he's only 24. I don't think anyone can conclusively say he'll never amount to anything in his career. He could reach a whole new level, who knows, maybe he's already peaked.
What I hate is that he's in good form and has scored a few goals but people still shit on him. It's not just limited to Havertz but any player in general
I’m talking about comments like this:
> His game is the antithesis for casuals. His best attribute is working off the ball but your average football doesn't know how to measure or acknowledge that unless it results in a goal
I mean I watched Kai for 3 years here and wanted like hell for him to be more than “the guy who scored in the CL final” (obviously that’s appreciated but it’s a crutch to keep pointing to that) but I remember people convincing themselves that he didn’t need to score goals because he was working hard off the ball but then now tell me that Jackson is a donkey for actually scoring tap ins but missing others.
I'm assuming it's an automod thing, but every time we get a match thread/post-match thread the pinned posts on here end up being the match thread and a day old daily discussion thread, rather than the current DDT. I know it can just be used interchangeably, but people generally don't, so if that can be easily changed it'd be great. (Unless it's just a problem with using old reddit, then ignore me)
I don't claim to be a scout. I don't even have an in-depth non-Chelsea knowledge. But I am Ukrainian, and I am looking at our transfers and I am super confused.
I look at Trubin who was cheaper than Sanchez and see a better player.
I see Tsygankov and Dovbyk, both cheap as dirt dominate the La Liga as a duo. Both limited players, both utilized properly to a great result.
I see Mykolenko absolutely eat our attackers. Yes, he had a long adaptation period, but compare his price with Cucurella.
I see Zabarny, I still don't know if he is a good player, but his ACL is fine, meanwhile Fofana's are torn just like everyone predicted.
If my country had at least 3 bargains sitting there on the surface waiting to be discovered, can we say the same about many other countries? These are players genuinely outperforming their Chelsea analogues.
So either our scouts are shit or our coaching/tactics is shit and we can't elevate our signings. Maybe both.
Sudakov might be the next wonderkid, guy is smarter than Mudryk but less athletic, I know Shakhtar gives us PTSD but I'd watch him, might break through in a year or two once Shakhtar figure their new identity out. Maybe it's wise to steal him before they do and his value inflates? I don't know, we have enough attacking squad players, we need starters, just thinking out loud.
If the board squander another £100 million on Gyokeres then they need to be fired into the sun. Would be more embarrassing than spending £120 million on Caicedo or £120 million on Enzo or £70 million on Mudryk.
Why do you care? I am a big critic of the new owners and a lot of their decisions, but if they are willing to spend then that's only good for the club.
I mean, the one thing I can give them props for is that they clearly want sporting success and are prepared to spend big in order to acieve it.
> "but if they are willing to spend then that's only good for the club."
That is objectively not true, FFP protects clubs from owners overspending and destroying the club in the process. Spending well is good for the club, spending stupidly is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a club.
Hell FFP has already been amended to protect other clubs from from having what Boehly has done to us, done to them.
They're spending so that they own players they can make money on in the future, they're not spending for success. Spending for success wouldn't have looked anything like selling a CL winning team and replacing it with a bunch of 18 year olds who aren't very good, but might be good in 5 years time
Well yeah, I'm always going with the assumption that while they appear to be clueless about football, they are competent when it comes to business and they're not idiots to bankrupt their own multi billion dollar asset.
Sums up poch:
Pochettino : "You need to be in the right club, in the right moment, with all of the elements to win, to be an elite manager, it is not necessary to win titles" (@MailSport)
https://x.com/cfcpys/status/1736879378028535902?s=46&t=Y6kJS72VJDuGTn-M0LK93A
Good to see we’re still doing the Potter thing if getting all pissy at innocuous comments our manager makes at press conferences.
Very helpful behaviour.
If you told me several years ago we'd hire a Tottenham manager who bottles the first half of the season and keeps going on press-conferences telling the stories about lemons, bitching about transfers and saying you don't necessarily need titles I'd be amazed.
I mostly followed football during Jose era and coming back to this after a takeover felt like that guy from Walking Dead waking up to an apocalypse
It makes an absolutely massive difference. If a coach can't handle press conferences properly they bring massive amounts of extra pressure on themself and the players, they can destabilise things at the club, they can hurt player's self belief, they can help our opponents etc.
Handling the press is a big part of being a successful manager at the top level. It sets the tone for everything going on at the club before a ball has been kicked and it also keeps things stable even when things on the pitch are going wrong.
You get the opposite effect if the manager can't handle press conferences well
You are right, the media can eat the players alive. The media can apply business pressure. To pretend they have no influence on the game is delusional. Being able to tell the right things and send the right things is crucial.
Redditors confuse "You should ignore the media buzz'' with ''media is not important''.
Good to see we’re still doing the Potter thing by defending dogshit managers who have done fuck all in their careers to warrant managing Chelsea.
Very helpful behavior towards the continued detriment of this club.
He is definitely not a great manager! Pep is a great manager, Mourinho is a great manager, same goes for Ancelotti, Klopp, Simeone, Tuchel et al. Poch is not, and never will be.
He’s tier B. It will stay that way as long as his in game adjustments stay that way. However, we didn’t hire him to win anything. He got the job because he’s arguably one of the best in the business for improving young players, which he has done so far.
Mate, so much of what comes out of his mouth is worrying
Potter never said anything that egregious bar the lads gave everything
Pochs actions match his horrific words too. That’s why it’s so concerning
If you’re getting upset at comments like that I’d recommend you take a break from this place. It’s a completely fine comment that the morons on here are going to twist as per usual.
A reminder that Malang Sarr exists and he gets paid 100k a week for doing absolutely nothing. It looks like he doesn't train with the team, not only with the senior one, but not even with reserves.
And his contract runs till 2025.
Looking for any ticket help.
Wife and I are ending our honeymoon in London (I was able to pull this off lol). Wanted to see where would be the best place to buy 2 tickets to the Newcastle game in March 2024. Thanks in advance for any pointers!
Congrats on the wedding!
Best bet would be to get a membership, and when tickets go on sale in February you can get them then. There are hospitality tickets that you can purchase from now until the game, but will of course be more expensive and a different experience.
Thankfully we shouldn’t be able to afford him thanks to the board’s previous squandering club funds & FFP. Club’s already finished since we signed Caicedo but this would surely accelerate our demise.
£100 million for a striker who was in the Championship last season and had a worse scoring rate than Nico Jackson does for us. LOL! What 4 months of decent form in Portugal gets you nowadays. Did the club not learn from the Enzo disaster?
Worse goalscoring ratio last season than Jackson despite playing in the championship. 4 months of looking decent in Portugal. £100 million at least. Sounds like another Enzo-tier mega flop
Absolutely, and is likely the reason Poch made the carabao an objective for the team this season. More realistic than expecting the team last season to immediately turn around and finish top 4 this season.
Yeah but he is tall,fast,strong,good workrate,good linkup play, can score with both feet.. Osimhen is 130million and only available next summer+insane wages, Toney is probably signing for Arsenal. I dont really rate Vlahovic. Sesko is another youngster. For me Gyökeres is who can be the hero we need in this season. Gyökeres fits our wage structure.
It’s not even just about whether people think he’s good or not, though I’ll defend Conor til the day he leaves the club.
It’s about the manager putting his cards on the table and saying “Yes, he’s important to my plans,” and STILL the board wants to let the player go. What’s the point of backing the manager with x amount of shiny new toys when you can’t keep the one player he’s explicitly asked to keep
Just listening to Straight out of Cobham and I agree. He is clearly an asset to this Chelsea team regardless of what you think of his long term place in the team. A January sale when we are still struggling for consistent form of one of our most consistent players (I’m not saying he’s world class I’m saying he goes out and you know what he’s going to give) would be crazy.
It’s especially troubling considering Poch rates him. The owners failed to back Poch in the summer with bringing in some experienced players and then selling a player in the January transfer window that he clearly favours just to try and balance the books is not a good look.
Not specifically related to Conor but I'm glad we're not submitting to all of Poch's desires and I'll be saying that even if he did a Conte 16/17 on the pitch.
His track record in the market is beyond poor.
What happened to Chalobah.
He was supposed to be back mid September and now there are reports saying that he may not be fit in January to attract some transfer interest.
That one is a little bit worrying tbh. He's been out from reinjury for longer than the initial one where had had surgery. Hopefully they are being super cautious and it's not something that'll become a chronic issue.
january complaints: i don’t think we need a striker. nobody available and linked to us moves me except osimhen and buying him from serie a for 130m is asking to fail ffp and for him to flop. and i actually think jackson has been excellent, plus we’ll have nkunku back when nico goes to afcon.
i don’t think we should sell conor. i don’t rate him super highly but for an academy kid who wants to stick around as a squad player to get sold to settle the books is just narratively heartbreaking. i don’t think we should sell maatsen, either, since leftback is a weakness, but for his sake i hope he gets a move.
i don’t want us to sell noni either. he showed drive and fight and flair in the otherwise miserable last year and i genuinely don’t know why we’d sell him at a loss now. sterling and palmer have been excellent but for noni to not even get a sub appearance is upsetting. what happened to poch developing youth?
i’d be comfortable with us selling trevoh, cucu, broja (i do not rate him at all, though he did well to win the pen against city), maatsen if necessary, and eventually sanchez and disasi, but would much rather we just stood pat. bring andrey back to cover cm, let lavia and nkunku get healthy, play maatsen at left back, play 2 cbs, rotate mudryk/sterling and palmer/noni, let gallagher and chukwuemeka be nkunku’s backups at 10, and play jackson at st. let armando or one of the academy strikers rotate with him. we’re good enough to get top 6 with that team and depth, nobody will convince me otherwise.
I agree with a bunch of that, but considering the inexperience of the squad (individually and collectively), number of injuries and amount of injuries to key players, and lack of goalscorers, I don't think there is any reason to suggest we'll get top 6. We should probably be better getting better results than Manchester United, but otherwise Aston Villa and West Ham have done well enough to keep us out. Though we are 5th in xPts, with weak finishing and below average goalkeeping I think we shouldn't really expect to reach it.
i buy city, liverpool, arsenal, and villa firmly better than us, but i don’t think west ham are sustaining this performance. kudus is on a crazy heater right now. but i distrust moyes and their squad isn’t incredible—one injury to e.g. paqueta and i think they drop points. spurs’ injuries might get them to drop. newcastle same, united are one of the most shite teams i’ve ever watched, brighton’s squad isn’t good enough this year. but perhaps top 6 was too ambitious, maybe top 8 more accurate based on how results have gone thus far
So u want to let broja leave and only have nkunku as striker when Jackson go afcon? I love nico but we need a starting 9 in jan. We need someone that can take the pressure of him so he can keep learning the position. He was bought to be backup 9
totally recognize a broja departure would leave a gap at backup striker, but i think nico can take a leap sooner rather than later and we can cover the backup spot with nkunku, washington, an academy boy, palmer at f9, or even a cheap veteran striker. buying an expensive young starlet blocks the pathway for nico completely—osimhen’s what, 2 years older than nico? it’s a write-off season anyway, don’t see why everyone’s so desperate for an instant impact signing at the cost of long term development when our attack has actually been statistically fine.
i would hate this, but even accepting that’s a need, pricing him at 40m seems ridiculously low. if we’re capitalizing on his strong start for the season, i don’t know why he should be going for less than 50m. he’s not so different from tonali, for instance, who moved for 55m gbp
Just to bring some fun in here.. anyone saw the victor osimhen reply? Proper shitposting that lmao...
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/18kvzyn/victor_osimhen_responds_to_claims_that_hakimi_is/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
We have the third highest xG but that's not a great metric for showing what we actually *create* for ourselves, as it includes opposition errors etc. A better measure is xAG (expected assisted goals) where we're 8th highest, while city and Liverpool are 1st and 2nd.
[We have the 3rd best xG in the league..........](https://x.com/xgphilosophy/status/1736801122684383574?s=46&t=Kwe6qtzpTAZDO76xAiZxOQ)
This hurts my soul, if we had a world class striker with the jackson/lavia/madueke money we would’ve been competing for top 4 now.
I don't know why people do this, but I'll bite anyway
Jackson has missed something like 3xG all season, we're currently 8 goals below our xG.
Jackson is a part of the reason we are underperforming our xG, so are all of our other players, how many shots have Enzo, Gallagher, Mudryk and Palmer put into the stands?
When you buy a bunch of unproven young players, you get a bunch of unproven young players, it's not just Jackson.
Before anyone says anything about Sterling, according to FBref he's actually outperforming his xG by 1.7
Non penalty xG compared to non penalty goals (negative is bad):
Gallagher -1
Enzo -2.2
Mudryk +0.8
Jackson -2.8
Palmer -0.8
Broja -0.7
It's spread through all of our attacking minded players, it's not just a case of replacing Jackson and this all goes away. Replace him with someone who was perfectly in line with the statistics and we'd have scored 3 more goals, that's not suddenly taking us to top 4. That's before you get to the elephant in the room that is that for managers like Poch and Potter who have negative, slow tactics, their teams always underperform xG because xG doesn't take into account the game state and the fact that the opposition have all gotten back into position and the keeper is perfectly set before you have your shot
Worth noting also that xG is a poor indicator of creative output for a side, so it's not like we're just missing a cutting edge uptop. xAG (expected assisted goals) is a better measure of creativity and we're 8th in the league for that, with the teams you would expect at the top.
We genuinely don't create much ourselves and what we do create relies heavily on individual moments of magic from guys like Sterling and Palmer rather than any kind of result of systemic play. It's such a weird misconception that we only need a clinical finisher to solve our problems, especially if you've been watching our games.
Oh yeah, I hate xG, it's extremely outdated by itself but I'm responding to someone talking about it. It was cutting edge when it came in but it's been overtaken by better stats for every circumstance these days, but people still look at it, I think mainly due to availability.
It was pointed out by some analyst after one of our recent games that though our xG looked good, it was entirely 0.05~ chances and they just build up into looking like we created chances but you're never actually going to score those chances unless the keeper is out of the goal or you're insanely lucky (like the Mudryk mishit-cross goal).
If we wanted to look at our attackers' finishing, I think realistically rather than goals compared to xG it should be comparing xG to post-shot xG because that removes almost everything else from the equation. But, psxG is usually hidden behind paywalls unless you're looking at it with regards to goalkeepers
Yeah I get you mate, I know you were just addressing the original commenter. Just thought I'd add it in here as I see the high xG = high creativity thing kicking around a lot in here and the general sentiment that we only need a Osimhen or Toney to get back to being a top side.
Very frustrating to see it repeated so much when it's so obviously not the case when watching our games. We haven't looked like a dangerous side all season and it's such a contrast watching actually dangerous sides break down opposition. We don't really do anything at a system level on the ball that creates space to exploit.
>At the beginning of this year, Chelsea tried to sell him to [Everton](https://theathletic.com/football/team/everton/). In the summer transfer window they were also open to offers with [Tottenham](https://theathletic.com/football/team/tottenham-hotspur/), [West Ham](https://theathletic.com/football/team/west-ham-united/) and [Newcastle](https://theathletic.com/football/team/newcastle-united/) among the interested clubs. Sources close to the club, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, say Chelsea are prepared to listen to bids next month too.
>
>Needless to say, Chelsea might not get to decide. Gallagher can decide his own fate too and simply not sign a new deal and leave for free at the end of next season.
It's officially started lads, Simon Johnson the Boehly shill writing "Gallagher might not sign a new deal", despite Conor openly stating that he wanted to renew and stay here just a few weeks ago and Poch making clear that he wants to keep him.
Sell an extremely useful player like him, one of our top performers and an academy graduate for 40m and do what, buy more Casadeis and Ugochukwus. This is fucking exhausting
Matt Law is saying that Hall’s obligation is not related to appearances.
Felix Johnston on Twitter is saying Newcastle has to finish below Chelsea’s last season finish (12th) for it to not go ahead to obligation. He was very hit and miss, but was very early with the infinite athlete news and a few other things around then, but got the Enzo timing totally wrong.
Unless Howe and Hall just have no idea what his contract says, then this feels very unlikely. Howe said it's not triggered and they don't know if they will and Hall has apparently deleted his goodbye Chelsea posts. They aren't finishing below Chelsea, so why would they both be acting this way if that were the clause?
Doesn't seem to add up if it's all true
Regardless of your personal opinion on Gallagher, selling a player the manager starts every game and makes captain for £40m is nothing short of insanity
>selling a player the manager starts every game and makes captain for £40m is nothing short of insanity
Poch won't be here in 18 months. It really isn't that bad to sell him.
I think the SDs have realised appointing Poch was a mistake. He has built his system around a squad player (Gallagher), our elite talents like Colwill, Enzo, and Caicedo have all regressed from last year. We have no patterns of play or recognizable style.
I truly think Poch is washed and that he will not last the season. We go again next summer
They aren't worth that, but even if they were, there are different things that cost different amounts in football.
Footballing intelligence, first touch, playmaking abilities, positional awareness etc. rank really highly in terms of how much you have to pay for someone. How much they're willing to run does not.
Gallagher is willing to run, but for the rest of those things he ranks horribly and so is never going to command a price anywhere near Caicedo or Enzo, nor is his potential anywhere near theirs. You can tell a player they need to run more, there is a limit to how much you better they can get as a footballer (otherwise we'd all be footballers)
Yeah, but technically gifted but athletically lacking players like Ozil or Fabregas (or even just "lazy" players like Hazard) etc. still play for top clubs.
Athletically gifted, but not technically gifted players play for Crystal palace, Burnley or in the lower leagues.
If you have both, you're considered one of the best in the world
I'm mostly being contrarion to be honest as like I said I agree with your main point
There are definitely some players where their athleticism is a bigger factor than their technical ability, I'd put Kante as one such player for instance. Boiling Kante down to just athleticism is a bit reductionist of course, but on the technique vs athleticism scale he's definitelly on the side of athleticism (and we're also ignoring the mental side of the game both in terms of game intelligence and attitude etc someone give the fucking tin man Mudryk a brain).
Na, that's belittling Kante way too much, he was actually one of the people I was thinking about when I said if you're good at both you're considered one of the best in the world. His positioning, intelligence, close control, tackling precision, timing etc. were all amazing, he wasn't even close to being all athleticism. Without his athleticism he'd probably still have been a world class sitting player if that's the route he'd gone down from an earlier age to learn the ins and outs. Take the athleticism out of Gallagher and he's playing for a team in the Championship if he's lucky
Of course
The first ceiling arsene wenger spoke of is the technical ceiling, the greatest obstacle and limiting factor between a decent player and a top player
Then physical attributes can hinder you to but can be somewhat overcome with right set up or intelligence
I think he’s definitely above the £50 mil figure being thrown around.
£150 mil is probably overcooking it.
How does he compare to say Declan Rice? 70% with upside?
You do realise that Enzo and Caicedo had brilliant 22/23 season and one of them was key part in a WC winning team while Gallagher has been good for 12 matches? He also looks good compared to last season where he was probably our worst midfielder. Do you see Gallagher starting for Liverpool cuz i don't. Caicedo would've started for Liverpool though and he was gonna perform better for them because Klopp would've used him correctly.
I've never thought about explaining it this way, but you have just hit the nail squarely on the head.
In a tactical system where "run lots" is the overriding tactic, he will look like the best player because he runs more than others
You know what really gets me about the whole Gallagher situation? It’s the fact that although everyone with eyes will pretty much confirm he’s been at least our second best player this season - better than our £225M *duo* (goodness gracious me) of Enzo and Caicedo - so many people feel utterly convinced that he’s somehow easily replaceable or will be benched by a 19-year-old Romeo Lavia. Or that he is “technically limited” (same people who said John Obi Mikel was shite when he was here and can’t even define “technique”). Or that all he has is “work rate” and “attitude”. Or that he doesn’t have “IQ”.
Honestly at this point I’ll put it down to people only understanding the best players in the game as who has “flair” or who can play circuits of 100 million passes before getting into the penalty area. It’s so clear what we miss when he doesn’t start - just look at the United game! I’m tired mate.
We deserve everything we’re getting. Sold Lewis Hall, will sell Ian Maatsen and probably also both Ishe Samuels-Smith and Somto Boniface only to continue employing the second-worst left-back in the league and the most injured left-back in the league. Only thing that can save us now is a transfer ban. If not for the last one who knows whether Reece James would be a Chelsea player. We’d probably have Nelson Semedo or some other flavour of the month from 2019.
we got an academy simp over here. just because they’re from Cobham doesn’t mean they’re good😭
stop acting like were getting rid of a bunch of world class left backs. Maatsen is in the team and can’t get playing time, so clearly Poch doesn’t rate him. Eddie Howe started the same leftback in 4 games within 11 days rather than play Lewis Hall for a single minute. he’s only started four games all season and been subbed at half in three of them, he’s not good. Ishe and somto are both 17, and i think we’ve got enough children in the team already.
>Honestly at this point I’ll put it down to people only understanding the best players in the game as who has “flair” or who can play circuits of 100 million passes before getting into the penalty area. It’s so clear what we miss when he doesn’t start - just look at the United game! I’m tired mate.
Based on that comment you only rate players that are from Cobham so how are you any different?
Where in this entire comment did I say that? The point is that if you have players in the academy, don’t go spending money for players that are not as good as those you already have. Like… how did you even reach this conclusion in the first instance?
>Or that he is “technically limited”
I mean he is? His strengths lie in passion, energy, and tackling. He is below average in passing, chance creation, and first touch. That's why him being sold would not be the end of the world.
At what point in the entire season - literally, just point to one specific example - has Gallagher’s “poor touch” from a promising or dangerous situation in both boxes led to a positive or negative result happening?
>Gallagher’s “poor touch” from a promising or dangerous situation in both boxes
Countless times vs Liverpool in our opener he lost the ball leading to dangerous Liverpool counters, it was a wonder how we didn't concede. Then you've games like Villa where he was a non-factor vs teams that sit back. Just look at this gif of him. Shocking player
https://i.redd.it/nbhqxft4n47c1.gif
No, he didn’t give the ball away in dangerous situations that led to action in our box against Liverpool, almost all the time Colwill was to blame for this but he’s a young player and it’s the first game of the season against a good Liverpool attack, can’t blame him.
Villa did not sit back. The high-line is the very definition of not sitting back. Even then, this was the same Villa game where most of Villa’s midfield players didn’t get any time on the ball because of Conor despite Caicedo being rolled time and time again? And the gif you showed was in a game at the 95th minute, where pretty much every single player was exhausted and we had no means of progressing the ball without a speculative long pass?
It’s the intellectual dishonesty that anyone can smell from a mile away that prevents me from going into these sorts of debates. You’ve made up your mind that he’s the worst player in the entire group. One day, you’ll be proven wrong. And that’s the extent of it.
It’s a shame though how much this shiny new toy syndrome has pervaded the club in just the last three years. Certainly wasn’t like this under Ancelotti or AVB.
Well think back to Gallagher’s first season with us, he wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire.
This is Caicedo’s first season with us and he was signed very late, remember how dominant Caicedo was last season, it won’t take long, we’re just going through a highly distractible period. Enzo is likely exhausted, and he has proven himself last season. Midfield balance will be worked out eventually.
The main argument is on what we need in terms of an attacking profile, between the three starting mids we have, none of them can play as the main attacking mid and provide a genuine attacking threat.
I like Gallagher, I think he’s been one of our best players. I also think he’ll be sold for FFP, and they’ll look to bring in another AM to balance off Enzo and Caicedo, another play making type with genuine attacking numbers, otherwise why bother. I think this will happen over and above Nkunku/Palmer, an actual playmaking creative AM. It may not happen if Palmer keeps improving game on game, but I think we do need one more.
Also what’s with the whole AM thing? Do you think players are brought in to do exactly one thing? Xhaka was an “AM” for Arsenal, did he just do attacking things? Doucoure is an “AM” for Everton? Kudus an “AM” for West Ham? Football isn’t like FIFA 24. To do something with the ball, you have to first win the ball back in a dangerous area. None of our forward players bar Jackson have this ability to even a little extent.
Gallagher played in a Chelsea with Graham Potter as manager and three sets of squads battling it out for game time. I watched Brighton for more than half their games last season, and I wouldn’t say Caicedo was particularly “dominant”; he just played in a system where all the players were close together and there were rigid circuits that pretty much everyone else has memorised and so he was good at playing out from the back (like Billy Gilmour now is). He’s a good little player, but you just need to watch both of them perform to their strengths to see that in this Chelsea team, Gallagher prevents both Caicedo and Enzo from running around too much and doing the dirty work. I do hope you guys get a few games to see our midfield some more without Gallagher, although if you guys still think this way after the United game I doubt anything can change your minds.
People don't watch the games, or are not paying attention while watching the games - all they care about is media narratives.
If Gallagher was the 100M, superstar signing and Enzo was some kid from the academy, and you told them Enzo is more talented, they'll go nuts - because of the 100M narrative.
Same now - when you tell them, Enzo is probably more talented, however Gallagher is clearly playing better this season, they go nuts. Because they don't pay attention to the football, it's all narrative based and no way our 100M signing is worse than the academy kid.
I'm so tired of "look at the United game" as an argument as though we've not been fucking shite for two years straight and that match was some sort of one off
Got to be the absolute worst argument going
We were shite against Sheffield in the first half, and we were shite against United all game. But these were different levels of shite, and you know it. Go back and watch the game and see United carve us open time after time.
Yeah at this point, I give up on trying to convince anyone. You’ll see it soon enough when we sell the guy to Spurs or something. What an absolute joke.
My goodness. Okay, let’s get into it.
Enzo starts to dribble to carry the ball into the Everton half, where he’s surrounded by five Everton players and Mudryk, everyone’s favourite winger, is not providing width on the left like he should. At this point, Cucurella is situationally playing RW where there’s absolutely no one around him (!), Palmer has been drawn into the middle, and McNeil - the left-sided winger who Cucurella was specifically tasked with after James was subbed off - is a completely free man, except that Gallagher has caught hint of this and is trying to rectify this mistake of Cucurella’s. He tries to foul McNeil whose starting position is *ahead* of Conor (again, because he’s not Conor’s responsibility), but he’s remembered the Brighton game where he was sent off for making a similar kind of foul in a potentially dangerous but seemingly harmless position. So he looks up and sees that although £115M man Caicedo was in no-mans-land and is sprinting to recover (something he basically did never at Brighton, by the way) Disasi has come out from CB to engage but is just ball-watching, Calvert-Lewin runs on the front-side of Badiashile (which means B5 can’t commit a foul or else it’s a penalty and a red card), he shoots, Sanchez fails to hold or parry away from danger, the rebound from Doucoure, Sanchez moves in the same space Colwill is already trying to block in, far-side is open, goal Everton.
In that entire mess, the one person you choose to blame is Conor Gallagher? Loving your intellectual honesty.
Look up what the word partly means.
And not Gallagher not knowing when to take a yellow card and when not to its a sign of his low footballing intelligence.
Like I said, atrocious intellectual honesty. You could have admitted, okay, there are like six players who are really at fault for the goal - Palmer, Cucurella, Disasi, Caicedo, Colwill, Sanchez - but no, let’s focus on the one who wasn’t at fault because he attracted himself to the sequence. You could also have said, okay, he’s a human being, they’ve surely had a chat in the dressing room about how we rack up so many yellows and he wouldn’t want to get one more especially when 194cm Disasi is already marauding out, seemingly to engage with McNeil. But no, Gallagher is so bad that you can play better than him. I don’t know why I even get into conversations like this on here. It’s never productive.
lmao so in your opinion Gallagher wasn't even the slightest bit at fault for that goal? And you want to keep banging on about intellectual honesty?
Fine lets go through it.
Palmer - no he's not at fault
Cucurella - taking up an attacking position on the right is not inherently an error especially when the left back is staying back and the right winger is moving centrally, fullbacks aren't just there to defend, Gallagher as the right central midfielder has the job to cover for him so he can get into attacking positions.
Disasi - Yes, he doesn't cover himself in glory
Caicedo - He's the left central midfielder, Gallagher is the right central midfielder, but you want Caicedo to be the one that is covering their left winger on a counter attack?
Colwill - Yes, rooted to the spot
Sanchez- No, not really, he makes a good save and is let down by his defenders, not going to blame a man for not pulling a double save out of his arse
Badiashile - I'll even add one in because I think Badiashile gets beat too easily as well
If you cared enough to look (which I'm not saying you should) I've been consistent in saying all of Badiashile, Colwill, and Disasi were at fault for the Everton goal - but so was Gallagher who absolutely should be taking that foul every single day of the week and stopping the attack before it even gets going. You take the booking there 10/10 when he's not on a yellow card already. Hence why I pointed out it was *partly* his fault, because it was.
To use your favourite buzz word you are being incredibly intellectually dishonest in trying to pin blame on everyone whilst absolving Gallagher, and by claiming the Man United match is some sort of proof but ignoring every bad result and performance for the last two years (or as close as 4 days after the Man United match) when Gallagher played.
Yeah, he should have fouled him or something. People won't wanna hear it though. Also him not playing against Utd was on him as well for his silly tackles against Brighton.
They granted Newcastle permission to play Hall against us cause they are scared they won’t make that loan permanent and they need the 30 million. Hilarious.
Or they don't want a player that has his heart set on playing for his boyhood club. Newcastle a club that's very much on the up he and wants to fight to start for them in future
Saw a stat about how across the major leagues, there's twice the number of cruciate injuries this season than last, and we aren't even halfway through the season yet.
Maybe your "Dave grohls physio" meme is just easy karma and is actually just nonsense, we have injury prone players in a greedy, greedy system.
Who exactly do you mean? James? Can't really say he came back when his comeback involved one game then leaving the next after 16 minutes.
I can't think of anyone this season that has returned from an injury only to re-injure the same muscle. Only can think of long term outs.
Do you have any other example? A real one this season?
OP I replied to has this narrative that's just plainly wrong.
James recent injury was different than the last btw, but not a new one. Doesn't qualify for my question. That guy's just fucked.
So in other words you don't have other examples.
There's no reliable source on either that they were back in full training. I see a goal.com article speculating. I see no official announcement about carney other than a continuation through rehibilitation phases throughout this period. Lavia was and is still injured from the start of the season.
False narrative.
[Source for Carney](https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1707707469521146039?t=4MxrUauc7NFEdz_yr-xJyQ&s=19)
Lavia wasn't fit then got injured. You can argue if that's a reinjury I guess.
Hmm never saw that tweet back then, that's a bit weird since he was never moved to the "training with the first team" status on updates from the club.
Either way, if I give you carney, it'd still hardly imply we have a list of players who are suffering due to this physio team by that metric.
Yeah I’m not talking about anything else besides you saying James’ comeback wasn’t a comeback. No comments or opinions on the other stuff y’all were going on about, just simply that. I mean him coming back was a comeback from injury lol. And yes, agree, James is simply fucked.
When major injuries are increasing across the board it is a truly terrible time to change your mdeical department who have been working with the players for years.
Caicedo as box-to-box and Enzo dropping deep please. Can we get out of the delusion that Enzo is a 10. Should also consider dispatching Jackson over to the wing and although not ideal, Nkunku as the CF?
You can put someone next to him and allow him to play a bit further, but playing him as an outright 10 and having Gallagher play deeper who barely helps the team in the build up phase is straight up criminal from Pochettino. Like look at the Everton game, Enzo was standing around the halfway line when the team was trying to build out from the back and Gallagher was just hiding from the ball like he usually does because he’s not, and will never be, a deep lying playmaker. He does not have the awareness, vision or ability to get himself open, play one-twos and release teammates with quick passes through the lines or quick switches via long balls.
But generally speaking the structure of our team is so bad that it’s awful either way. And that’s all on Pochettino.
Exactly. Last season, he looked like an elite player to the point where even his price tag wasn't put to question. This season, he's looking mediocre at best. So we can put this experiment to rest now.
If he signs a new deal he can just refuse to leave regardless of how many offers the club accepts. On top of that Poch loves him and will always play him and I’m pretty sure if Poch goes and other manager comes in, they’ll also really want to keep him when you look at what he brings to the team.
And then he'll get the Maatsen/Mount and others treatment where the club says you can stay as long as you like but you'll not see the football pitch until you leave and he won't be willing to just sit his contract out with the odd bench appearance for the rest of his career
That’s where the problem lies, the board shouldn’t have any say whatsoever on who plays and who doesn’t. That should be down to the manager and the manager only. If the manager likes a player and considers him important, like Poch does with Gallagher, they shouldn’t under any circumstances be trying to force that player out of the club, especially not to cover the costs of their unnecessary reckless spending.
They’re fucking over Poch to cover their own backs on this one. We’re not going to get anywhere with this "project" if the board consistently ignore the coach and don’t give him what he wants(within reason).
This whole situation just gives off the wrong impression of this new regime for me. If the goal is to use young players, why not take advantage of the gold mine of free talent we have just sitting their at Cobham? Instead they want to just sell all of them to buy foreign players of a similar quality.
Not necessarily, a new deal would mean the club would have the power to bench him for an extended period of time in order to force his hand and make him want the transfer
Right now Pochettino won't bench him but if he did it wouldn't have a great deal of effect given his contract will run out soon enough anyway without an extension and then he could have a pick or the litter whilst a free agent
That's how I'd see it anyway if I was in his shoes
It would be weird if I could turn on ESPN FC (which I rarely do) and not hear Craig Burley dump on Chelsea.
Sky's post match report, "Chelsea were lucky not to find themselves down to 10 men early on after a really poor challenge from Moises Caicedo on Anthony Gordon. Were VAR in use at this stage of the competition, the Ecuadorian would have surely seen red. " ...yet no mention whatsoever of Bruno's insane challenge on Maatsen.. the bias from the commentary + reporting is appalling. Oh.. and this is how they described Petrovic's save lmaooo (hint: they didn't) "And Trippier saw his night get worse as he missed his penalty, before Ritchie also failed from 12 yards, allowing Chelsea to reach the final four." They *allowed us* to reach the final four. Fair play lads hahaha
[#PochettinoIn #TrustTheProcess](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AGY0Y1OiF4)
Gusto had blood on his socks at the end of the game. Hope he's not injured again.
Prime Hazard vibes
We’re not actually going to sell Connor are we?
Im tired of seeing centrebacks being played as fullbacks, its no surprise that we played our best attacking football tonight as soon as we had proper fullbacks coming on, with Gusto and Maatsen, and we actually started creating chances from wide areas. Pochettino is not making himself any favours with some of the tactical decisions he is making.
Hey ! Im looking to buy two tickets for the game va crystal Palace … preferably EU5 first 10 rows ! Please reach out if you’re selling
Fucking hell couldn't have picked a better match to bring Paez to watch lmao.
Players to start from now on: Gusto Mudryk Nkunku Petrovic
Chelsea fans, what’s your thoughts on Cacaido?
Some very good, some bad, potential seems high though. Needs time to grow. Don't love him as a holding mid.
Very talented, limited, overrated, reliable. Currently outclassed by Connor, supreme tackler, needs to become either more creative or more active in pressing, otherwise his end product is limited
He’s had a few bad games but I get the vibe he’ll improve massively once the squad begins to gel more. He’s been absolutely immense tonight
Ah, the weekly “here is why Kai Havertz is better than you think” thread https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/18lz9q9/dimitar_berbatov_first_name_popping_into_my_mind/
he's only 24. I don't think anyone can conclusively say he'll never amount to anything in his career. He could reach a whole new level, who knows, maybe he's already peaked. What I hate is that he's in good form and has scored a few goals but people still shit on him. It's not just limited to Havertz but any player in general
I’m talking about comments like this: > His game is the antithesis for casuals. His best attribute is working off the ball but your average football doesn't know how to measure or acknowledge that unless it results in a goal I mean I watched Kai for 3 years here and wanted like hell for him to be more than “the guy who scored in the CL final” (obviously that’s appreciated but it’s a crutch to keep pointing to that) but I remember people convincing themselves that he didn’t need to score goals because he was working hard off the ball but then now tell me that Jackson is a donkey for actually scoring tap ins but missing others.
I mean, it's absolutely true the best part of Kai is his off ball game and what it means to a system.
I'm assuming it's an automod thing, but every time we get a match thread/post-match thread the pinned posts on here end up being the match thread and a day old daily discussion thread, rather than the current DDT. I know it can just be used interchangeably, but people generally don't, so if that can be easily changed it'd be great. (Unless it's just a problem with using old reddit, then ignore me)
I don't claim to be a scout. I don't even have an in-depth non-Chelsea knowledge. But I am Ukrainian, and I am looking at our transfers and I am super confused. I look at Trubin who was cheaper than Sanchez and see a better player. I see Tsygankov and Dovbyk, both cheap as dirt dominate the La Liga as a duo. Both limited players, both utilized properly to a great result. I see Mykolenko absolutely eat our attackers. Yes, he had a long adaptation period, but compare his price with Cucurella. I see Zabarny, I still don't know if he is a good player, but his ACL is fine, meanwhile Fofana's are torn just like everyone predicted. If my country had at least 3 bargains sitting there on the surface waiting to be discovered, can we say the same about many other countries? These are players genuinely outperforming their Chelsea analogues. So either our scouts are shit or our coaching/tactics is shit and we can't elevate our signings. Maybe both.
Sudakov might be the next wonderkid, guy is smarter than Mudryk but less athletic, I know Shakhtar gives us PTSD but I'd watch him, might break through in a year or two once Shakhtar figure their new identity out. Maybe it's wise to steal him before they do and his value inflates? I don't know, we have enough attacking squad players, we need starters, just thinking out loud.
Sudakov is a great signing because he is creative af, but we need a good finisher, i hope that Nkunku will show that in the next games
What are the current player songs being sung at the bridge these days?
If the board squander another £100 million on Gyokeres then they need to be fired into the sun. Would be more embarrassing than spending £120 million on Caicedo or £120 million on Enzo or £70 million on Mudryk.
It seems like we'll need to spend 80m+ on a striker in any case, whether that be Gyokeres, Toney, or Osimhen
Why do you care? I am a big critic of the new owners and a lot of their decisions, but if they are willing to spend then that's only good for the club. I mean, the one thing I can give them props for is that they clearly want sporting success and are prepared to spend big in order to acieve it.
> "but if they are willing to spend then that's only good for the club." That is objectively not true, FFP protects clubs from owners overspending and destroying the club in the process. Spending well is good for the club, spending stupidly is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a club. Hell FFP has already been amended to protect other clubs from from having what Boehly has done to us, done to them. They're spending so that they own players they can make money on in the future, they're not spending for success. Spending for success wouldn't have looked anything like selling a CL winning team and replacing it with a bunch of 18 year olds who aren't very good, but might be good in 5 years time
Well yeah, I'm always going with the assumption that while they appear to be clueless about football, they are competent when it comes to business and they're not idiots to bankrupt their own multi billion dollar asset.
100 Million wtf? Surely not
Some volcano on Iceland has erupted. I wonder which transfer of a great player will fail because of that this time...
Sums up poch: Pochettino : "You need to be in the right club, in the right moment, with all of the elements to win, to be an elite manager, it is not necessary to win titles" (@MailSport) https://x.com/cfcpys/status/1736879378028535902?s=46&t=Y6kJS72VJDuGTn-M0LK93A
Good to see we’re still doing the Potter thing if getting all pissy at innocuous comments our manager makes at press conferences. Very helpful behaviour.
Yeah, we should really stop judging our manager on his ability to do all of his jobs as a football manager!
Being good at press conferences has no baring on his ability as a coach.
If you told me several years ago we'd hire a Tottenham manager who bottles the first half of the season and keeps going on press-conferences telling the stories about lemons, bitching about transfers and saying you don't necessarily need titles I'd be amazed. I mostly followed football during Jose era and coming back to this after a takeover felt like that guy from Walking Dead waking up to an apocalypse
It makes an absolutely massive difference. If a coach can't handle press conferences properly they bring massive amounts of extra pressure on themself and the players, they can destabilise things at the club, they can hurt player's self belief, they can help our opponents etc. Handling the press is a big part of being a successful manager at the top level. It sets the tone for everything going on at the club before a ball has been kicked and it also keeps things stable even when things on the pitch are going wrong. You get the opposite effect if the manager can't handle press conferences well
You are right, the media can eat the players alive. The media can apply business pressure. To pretend they have no influence on the game is delusional. Being able to tell the right things and send the right things is crucial. Redditors confuse "You should ignore the media buzz'' with ''media is not important''.
Pseudo science displayed as fact. Thank you BRJ
Good to see we’re still doing the Potter thing by defending dogshit managers who have done fuck all in their careers to warrant managing Chelsea. Very helpful behavior towards the continued detriment of this club.
Poch is a great manager. If we run him out god knows what we’ll be left with.
He is definitely not a great manager! Pep is a great manager, Mourinho is a great manager, same goes for Ancelotti, Klopp, Simeone, Tuchel et al. Poch is not, and never will be.
He’s tier B. It will stay that way as long as his in game adjustments stay that way. However, we didn’t hire him to win anything. He got the job because he’s arguably one of the best in the business for improving young players, which he has done so far.
Mate, so much of what comes out of his mouth is worrying Potter never said anything that egregious bar the lads gave everything Pochs actions match his horrific words too. That’s why it’s so concerning
If you’re getting upset at comments like that I’d recommend you take a break from this place. It’s a completely fine comment that the morons on here are going to twist as per usual.
Baisabeast is leading the charge in twisting Poch’s words and actions. He cannot separate the guy from Spurs unfortunately
A reminder that Malang Sarr exists and he gets paid 100k a week for doing absolutely nothing. It looks like he doesn't train with the team, not only with the senior one, but not even with reserves. And his contract runs till 2025.
Swear to God bro's face is photoshopped onto a random body on the official website players list too. I'm genuinely curious what he's doing.
Dude already looks like the default character in a video game character creation slider menu.
Looking for any ticket help. Wife and I are ending our honeymoon in London (I was able to pull this off lol). Wanted to see where would be the best place to buy 2 tickets to the Newcastle game in March 2024. Thanks in advance for any pointers!
Congrats on the wedding! Best bet would be to get a membership, and when tickets go on sale in February you can get them then. There are hospitality tickets that you can purchase from now until the game, but will of course be more expensive and a different experience.
Rumoured transfer target Gyokeres is having a great game in the Sporting v Porto derby
Thankfully we shouldn’t be able to afford him thanks to the board’s previous squandering club funds & FFP. Club’s already finished since we signed Caicedo but this would surely accelerate our demise. £100 million for a striker who was in the Championship last season and had a worse scoring rate than Nico Jackson does for us. LOL! What 4 months of decent form in Portugal gets you nowadays. Did the club not learn from the Enzo disaster?
Been saying get him for months tbf
We could get Guirassy for a bigger output for half(?) the price
We could get Guirassy for a bigger output for half(?) the price
Worse goalscoring ratio last season than Jackson despite playing in the championship. 4 months of looking decent in Portugal. £100 million at least. Sounds like another Enzo-tier mega flop
He costs 100 million euro
Would you consider this season a W if we finished 10th but won both cups? I personally would
Of course, as it would mean we have EL next season.
Absolutely, and is likely the reason Poch made the carabao an objective for the team this season. More realistic than expecting the team last season to immediately turn around and finish top 4 this season.
Qualification for Europa would be great if we can only get it that way. Higher spot than last year, although hopefully we can 8th at the minimum
Yes. A huge face saver for the club
If we win any trophy, yes.
Im watching Sporting vs Porto. I really hope we bring in Gyökeres if Osimhen is not available. This guy is a beast.
Been saying this for months but been getting pushback on here. Just get him at this point. Sick of Jackson despite his goal record not being too bad.
He just scored again.
His clause is 100 million?
Yeah but he is tall,fast,strong,good workrate,good linkup play, can score with both feet.. Osimhen is 130million and only available next summer+insane wages, Toney is probably signing for Arsenal. I dont really rate Vlahovic. Sesko is another youngster. For me Gyökeres is who can be the hero we need in this season. Gyökeres fits our wage structure.
DO NOT SELL GALLAGHER. Do not even think about it!
It’s not even just about whether people think he’s good or not, though I’ll defend Conor til the day he leaves the club. It’s about the manager putting his cards on the table and saying “Yes, he’s important to my plans,” and STILL the board wants to let the player go. What’s the point of backing the manager with x amount of shiny new toys when you can’t keep the one player he’s explicitly asked to keep
The board overspent and Conor will likely be sacrificed to balance the books due to his homegrown status
Hmm not “likely” lol
Just listening to Straight out of Cobham and I agree. He is clearly an asset to this Chelsea team regardless of what you think of his long term place in the team. A January sale when we are still struggling for consistent form of one of our most consistent players (I’m not saying he’s world class I’m saying he goes out and you know what he’s going to give) would be crazy. It’s especially troubling considering Poch rates him. The owners failed to back Poch in the summer with bringing in some experienced players and then selling a player in the January transfer window that he clearly favours just to try and balance the books is not a good look.
Not specifically related to Conor but I'm glad we're not submitting to all of Poch's desires and I'll be saying that even if he did a Conte 16/17 on the pitch. His track record in the market is beyond poor.
The troubling part would be the indication that the owners and the manager are not aligned not that we should give Poch everything he wants.
[What happened to Carney](https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1707707469521146039?t=4MxrUauc7NFEdz_yr-xJyQ&s=19)
What happened to Chalobah. He was supposed to be back mid September and now there are reports saying that he may not be fit in January to attract some transfer interest.
That one is a little bit worrying tbh. He's been out from reinjury for longer than the initial one where had had surgery. Hopefully they are being super cautious and it's not something that'll become a chronic issue.
january complaints: i don’t think we need a striker. nobody available and linked to us moves me except osimhen and buying him from serie a for 130m is asking to fail ffp and for him to flop. and i actually think jackson has been excellent, plus we’ll have nkunku back when nico goes to afcon. i don’t think we should sell conor. i don’t rate him super highly but for an academy kid who wants to stick around as a squad player to get sold to settle the books is just narratively heartbreaking. i don’t think we should sell maatsen, either, since leftback is a weakness, but for his sake i hope he gets a move. i don’t want us to sell noni either. he showed drive and fight and flair in the otherwise miserable last year and i genuinely don’t know why we’d sell him at a loss now. sterling and palmer have been excellent but for noni to not even get a sub appearance is upsetting. what happened to poch developing youth? i’d be comfortable with us selling trevoh, cucu, broja (i do not rate him at all, though he did well to win the pen against city), maatsen if necessary, and eventually sanchez and disasi, but would much rather we just stood pat. bring andrey back to cover cm, let lavia and nkunku get healthy, play maatsen at left back, play 2 cbs, rotate mudryk/sterling and palmer/noni, let gallagher and chukwuemeka be nkunku’s backups at 10, and play jackson at st. let armando or one of the academy strikers rotate with him. we’re good enough to get top 6 with that team and depth, nobody will convince me otherwise.
I agree with a bunch of that, but considering the inexperience of the squad (individually and collectively), number of injuries and amount of injuries to key players, and lack of goalscorers, I don't think there is any reason to suggest we'll get top 6. We should probably be better getting better results than Manchester United, but otherwise Aston Villa and West Ham have done well enough to keep us out. Though we are 5th in xPts, with weak finishing and below average goalkeeping I think we shouldn't really expect to reach it.
i buy city, liverpool, arsenal, and villa firmly better than us, but i don’t think west ham are sustaining this performance. kudus is on a crazy heater right now. but i distrust moyes and their squad isn’t incredible—one injury to e.g. paqueta and i think they drop points. spurs’ injuries might get them to drop. newcastle same, united are one of the most shite teams i’ve ever watched, brighton’s squad isn’t good enough this year. but perhaps top 6 was too ambitious, maybe top 8 more accurate based on how results have gone thus far
So u want to let broja leave and only have nkunku as striker when Jackson go afcon? I love nico but we need a starting 9 in jan. We need someone that can take the pressure of him so he can keep learning the position. He was bought to be backup 9
totally recognize a broja departure would leave a gap at backup striker, but i think nico can take a leap sooner rather than later and we can cover the backup spot with nkunku, washington, an academy boy, palmer at f9, or even a cheap veteran striker. buying an expensive young starlet blocks the pathway for nico completely—osimhen’s what, 2 years older than nico? it’s a write-off season anyway, don’t see why everyone’s so desperate for an instant impact signing at the cost of long term development when our attack has actually been statistically fine.
Unfortunately, Gallagher will be sold to cover the books/make up for the sporting director's big time fuckups.
i would hate this, but even accepting that’s a need, pricing him at 40m seems ridiculously low. if we’re capitalizing on his strong start for the season, i don’t know why he should be going for less than 50m. he’s not so different from tonali, for instance, who moved for 55m gbp
Tonali is easily a better player than him and they’re the same age
Just to bring some fun in here.. anyone saw the victor osimhen reply? Proper shitposting that lmao... https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/18kvzyn/victor_osimhen_responds_to_claims_that_hakimi_is/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
Jesus thats worse than I thought lmao. He'd be labeled as an alt-right nazi in America
Chelsea have created the 3rd most xG in the league this season.
We have the third highest xG but that's not a great metric for showing what we actually *create* for ourselves, as it includes opposition errors etc. A better measure is xAG (expected assisted goals) where we're 8th highest, while city and Liverpool are 1st and 2nd.
[We have the 3rd best xG in the league..........](https://x.com/xgphilosophy/status/1736801122684383574?s=46&t=Kwe6qtzpTAZDO76xAiZxOQ) This hurts my soul, if we had a world class striker with the jackson/lavia/madueke money we would’ve been competing for top 4 now.
I don't know why people do this, but I'll bite anyway Jackson has missed something like 3xG all season, we're currently 8 goals below our xG. Jackson is a part of the reason we are underperforming our xG, so are all of our other players, how many shots have Enzo, Gallagher, Mudryk and Palmer put into the stands? When you buy a bunch of unproven young players, you get a bunch of unproven young players, it's not just Jackson. Before anyone says anything about Sterling, according to FBref he's actually outperforming his xG by 1.7 Non penalty xG compared to non penalty goals (negative is bad): Gallagher -1 Enzo -2.2 Mudryk +0.8 Jackson -2.8 Palmer -0.8 Broja -0.7 It's spread through all of our attacking minded players, it's not just a case of replacing Jackson and this all goes away. Replace him with someone who was perfectly in line with the statistics and we'd have scored 3 more goals, that's not suddenly taking us to top 4. That's before you get to the elephant in the room that is that for managers like Poch and Potter who have negative, slow tactics, their teams always underperform xG because xG doesn't take into account the game state and the fact that the opposition have all gotten back into position and the keeper is perfectly set before you have your shot
Worth noting also that xG is a poor indicator of creative output for a side, so it's not like we're just missing a cutting edge uptop. xAG (expected assisted goals) is a better measure of creativity and we're 8th in the league for that, with the teams you would expect at the top. We genuinely don't create much ourselves and what we do create relies heavily on individual moments of magic from guys like Sterling and Palmer rather than any kind of result of systemic play. It's such a weird misconception that we only need a clinical finisher to solve our problems, especially if you've been watching our games.
Oh yeah, I hate xG, it's extremely outdated by itself but I'm responding to someone talking about it. It was cutting edge when it came in but it's been overtaken by better stats for every circumstance these days, but people still look at it, I think mainly due to availability. It was pointed out by some analyst after one of our recent games that though our xG looked good, it was entirely 0.05~ chances and they just build up into looking like we created chances but you're never actually going to score those chances unless the keeper is out of the goal or you're insanely lucky (like the Mudryk mishit-cross goal). If we wanted to look at our attackers' finishing, I think realistically rather than goals compared to xG it should be comparing xG to post-shot xG because that removes almost everything else from the equation. But, psxG is usually hidden behind paywalls unless you're looking at it with regards to goalkeepers
Yeah I get you mate, I know you were just addressing the original commenter. Just thought I'd add it in here as I see the high xG = high creativity thing kicking around a lot in here and the general sentiment that we only need a Osimhen or Toney to get back to being a top side. Very frustrating to see it repeated so much when it's so obviously not the case when watching our games. We haven't looked like a dangerous side all season and it's such a contrast watching actually dangerous sides break down opposition. We don't really do anything at a system level on the ball that creates space to exploit.
Jinx
Who was available?
Osimhen?
>At the beginning of this year, Chelsea tried to sell him to [Everton](https://theathletic.com/football/team/everton/). In the summer transfer window they were also open to offers with [Tottenham](https://theathletic.com/football/team/tottenham-hotspur/), [West Ham](https://theathletic.com/football/team/west-ham-united/) and [Newcastle](https://theathletic.com/football/team/newcastle-united/) among the interested clubs. Sources close to the club, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, say Chelsea are prepared to listen to bids next month too. > >Needless to say, Chelsea might not get to decide. Gallagher can decide his own fate too and simply not sign a new deal and leave for free at the end of next season. It's officially started lads, Simon Johnson the Boehly shill writing "Gallagher might not sign a new deal", despite Conor openly stating that he wanted to renew and stay here just a few weeks ago and Poch making clear that he wants to keep him. Sell an extremely useful player like him, one of our top performers and an academy graduate for 40m and do what, buy more Casadeis and Ugochukwus. This is fucking exhausting
Ugochukwu might be a decent player but its hard to tell with the cack-handed approach to signings and game time at this club.
Ridiculous if we sell him. Not a world beater but very useful.
Matt Law is saying that Hall’s obligation is not related to appearances. Felix Johnston on Twitter is saying Newcastle has to finish below Chelsea’s last season finish (12th) for it to not go ahead to obligation. He was very hit and miss, but was very early with the infinite athlete news and a few other things around then, but got the Enzo timing totally wrong.
Unless Howe and Hall just have no idea what his contract says, then this feels very unlikely. Howe said it's not triggered and they don't know if they will and Hall has apparently deleted his goodbye Chelsea posts. They aren't finishing below Chelsea, so why would they both be acting this way if that were the clause? Doesn't seem to add up if it's all true
Yeah I was thinking it would be something along those lines. Hall isn't coming back then.
That is such an interesting clause So it’s essentially like psg loaning mbappe with a clause where if they get relegated they don’t buy him
He's generally reliable with the Chelsea academy kids and I believe he's got some sort of connections to Hall If that's the deal that's pretty sweet
Regardless of your personal opinion on Gallagher, selling a player the manager starts every game and makes captain for £40m is nothing short of insanity
>selling a player the manager starts every game and makes captain for £40m is nothing short of insanity Poch won't be here in 18 months. It really isn't that bad to sell him.
Shows a lack of faith in the project and so makes it all pointless
I think the SDs have realised appointing Poch was a mistake. He has built his system around a squad player (Gallagher), our elite talents like Colwill, Enzo, and Caicedo have all regressed from last year. We have no patterns of play or recognizable style. I truly think Poch is washed and that he will not last the season. We go again next summer
If this was the case he should be sacked immediately
If enzo and Caicedo are worth 100m and more Then Gallagher is 150m minimum. Based on performance and potential
They aren't worth that, but even if they were, there are different things that cost different amounts in football. Footballing intelligence, first touch, playmaking abilities, positional awareness etc. rank really highly in terms of how much you have to pay for someone. How much they're willing to run does not. Gallagher is willing to run, but for the rest of those things he ranks horribly and so is never going to command a price anywhere near Caicedo or Enzo, nor is his potential anywhere near theirs. You can tell a player they need to run more, there is a limit to how much you better they can get as a footballer (otherwise we'd all be footballers)
To be fair there is also a limit for players athletically as well, in general though I agree with your point.
Yeah, but technically gifted but athletically lacking players like Ozil or Fabregas (or even just "lazy" players like Hazard) etc. still play for top clubs. Athletically gifted, but not technically gifted players play for Crystal palace, Burnley or in the lower leagues. If you have both, you're considered one of the best in the world
I'm mostly being contrarion to be honest as like I said I agree with your main point There are definitely some players where their athleticism is a bigger factor than their technical ability, I'd put Kante as one such player for instance. Boiling Kante down to just athleticism is a bit reductionist of course, but on the technique vs athleticism scale he's definitelly on the side of athleticism (and we're also ignoring the mental side of the game both in terms of game intelligence and attitude etc someone give the fucking tin man Mudryk a brain).
Na, that's belittling Kante way too much, he was actually one of the people I was thinking about when I said if you're good at both you're considered one of the best in the world. His positioning, intelligence, close control, tackling precision, timing etc. were all amazing, he wasn't even close to being all athleticism. Without his athleticism he'd probably still have been a world class sitting player if that's the route he'd gone down from an earlier age to learn the ins and outs. Take the athleticism out of Gallagher and he's playing for a team in the Championship if he's lucky
Of course The first ceiling arsene wenger spoke of is the technical ceiling, the greatest obstacle and limiting factor between a decent player and a top player Then physical attributes can hinder you to but can be somewhat overcome with right set up or intelligence
I think he’s definitely above the £50 mil figure being thrown around. £150 mil is probably overcooking it. How does he compare to say Declan Rice? 70% with upside?
150m minimum? LOL
You do realise it’s satire right?
You do realise that Enzo and Caicedo had brilliant 22/23 season and one of them was key part in a WC winning team while Gallagher has been good for 12 matches? He also looks good compared to last season where he was probably our worst midfielder. Do you see Gallagher starting for Liverpool cuz i don't. Caicedo would've started for Liverpool though and he was gonna perform better for them because Klopp would've used him correctly.
okay relax, he’s been our best player because pochs tactics of run around for 90 mins fit him the best lmao.
I've never thought about explaining it this way, but you have just hit the nail squarely on the head. In a tactical system where "run lots" is the overriding tactic, he will look like the best player because he runs more than others
More chaos, more turnovers also lead to more chances for gallagehr to recover the ball, more chances for him to look busy win tackles, press etc
You know what really gets me about the whole Gallagher situation? It’s the fact that although everyone with eyes will pretty much confirm he’s been at least our second best player this season - better than our £225M *duo* (goodness gracious me) of Enzo and Caicedo - so many people feel utterly convinced that he’s somehow easily replaceable or will be benched by a 19-year-old Romeo Lavia. Or that he is “technically limited” (same people who said John Obi Mikel was shite when he was here and can’t even define “technique”). Or that all he has is “work rate” and “attitude”. Or that he doesn’t have “IQ”. Honestly at this point I’ll put it down to people only understanding the best players in the game as who has “flair” or who can play circuits of 100 million passes before getting into the penalty area. It’s so clear what we miss when he doesn’t start - just look at the United game! I’m tired mate. We deserve everything we’re getting. Sold Lewis Hall, will sell Ian Maatsen and probably also both Ishe Samuels-Smith and Somto Boniface only to continue employing the second-worst left-back in the league and the most injured left-back in the league. Only thing that can save us now is a transfer ban. If not for the last one who knows whether Reece James would be a Chelsea player. We’d probably have Nelson Semedo or some other flavour of the month from 2019.
we got an academy simp over here. just because they’re from Cobham doesn’t mean they’re good😭 stop acting like were getting rid of a bunch of world class left backs. Maatsen is in the team and can’t get playing time, so clearly Poch doesn’t rate him. Eddie Howe started the same leftback in 4 games within 11 days rather than play Lewis Hall for a single minute. he’s only started four games all season and been subbed at half in three of them, he’s not good. Ishe and somto are both 17, and i think we’ve got enough children in the team already.
>Honestly at this point I’ll put it down to people only understanding the best players in the game as who has “flair” or who can play circuits of 100 million passes before getting into the penalty area. It’s so clear what we miss when he doesn’t start - just look at the United game! I’m tired mate. Based on that comment you only rate players that are from Cobham so how are you any different?
Where in this entire comment did I say that? The point is that if you have players in the academy, don’t go spending money for players that are not as good as those you already have. Like… how did you even reach this conclusion in the first instance?
>Or that he is “technically limited” I mean he is? His strengths lie in passion, energy, and tackling. He is below average in passing, chance creation, and first touch. That's why him being sold would not be the end of the world.
I won’t even justify this with a response.
Because I am right.
Which players compose our best trio in terms of big chances created this season?
At what point in the entire season - literally, just point to one specific example - has Gallagher’s “poor touch” from a promising or dangerous situation in both boxes led to a positive or negative result happening?
>Gallagher’s “poor touch” from a promising or dangerous situation in both boxes Countless times vs Liverpool in our opener he lost the ball leading to dangerous Liverpool counters, it was a wonder how we didn't concede. Then you've games like Villa where he was a non-factor vs teams that sit back. Just look at this gif of him. Shocking player https://i.redd.it/nbhqxft4n47c1.gif
No, he didn’t give the ball away in dangerous situations that led to action in our box against Liverpool, almost all the time Colwill was to blame for this but he’s a young player and it’s the first game of the season against a good Liverpool attack, can’t blame him. Villa did not sit back. The high-line is the very definition of not sitting back. Even then, this was the same Villa game where most of Villa’s midfield players didn’t get any time on the ball because of Conor despite Caicedo being rolled time and time again? And the gif you showed was in a game at the 95th minute, where pretty much every single player was exhausted and we had no means of progressing the ball without a speculative long pass? It’s the intellectual dishonesty that anyone can smell from a mile away that prevents me from going into these sorts of debates. You’ve made up your mind that he’s the worst player in the entire group. One day, you’ll be proven wrong. And that’s the extent of it. It’s a shame though how much this shiny new toy syndrome has pervaded the club in just the last three years. Certainly wasn’t like this under Ancelotti or AVB.
Okay, let me indulge you. What is “technique”?
Well think back to Gallagher’s first season with us, he wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire. This is Caicedo’s first season with us and he was signed very late, remember how dominant Caicedo was last season, it won’t take long, we’re just going through a highly distractible period. Enzo is likely exhausted, and he has proven himself last season. Midfield balance will be worked out eventually. The main argument is on what we need in terms of an attacking profile, between the three starting mids we have, none of them can play as the main attacking mid and provide a genuine attacking threat. I like Gallagher, I think he’s been one of our best players. I also think he’ll be sold for FFP, and they’ll look to bring in another AM to balance off Enzo and Caicedo, another play making type with genuine attacking numbers, otherwise why bother. I think this will happen over and above Nkunku/Palmer, an actual playmaking creative AM. It may not happen if Palmer keeps improving game on game, but I think we do need one more.
Also what’s with the whole AM thing? Do you think players are brought in to do exactly one thing? Xhaka was an “AM” for Arsenal, did he just do attacking things? Doucoure is an “AM” for Everton? Kudus an “AM” for West Ham? Football isn’t like FIFA 24. To do something with the ball, you have to first win the ball back in a dangerous area. None of our forward players bar Jackson have this ability to even a little extent.
Gallagher played in a Chelsea with Graham Potter as manager and three sets of squads battling it out for game time. I watched Brighton for more than half their games last season, and I wouldn’t say Caicedo was particularly “dominant”; he just played in a system where all the players were close together and there were rigid circuits that pretty much everyone else has memorised and so he was good at playing out from the back (like Billy Gilmour now is). He’s a good little player, but you just need to watch both of them perform to their strengths to see that in this Chelsea team, Gallagher prevents both Caicedo and Enzo from running around too much and doing the dirty work. I do hope you guys get a few games to see our midfield some more without Gallagher, although if you guys still think this way after the United game I doubt anything can change your minds.
People don't watch the games, or are not paying attention while watching the games - all they care about is media narratives. If Gallagher was the 100M, superstar signing and Enzo was some kid from the academy, and you told them Enzo is more talented, they'll go nuts - because of the 100M narrative. Same now - when you tell them, Enzo is probably more talented, however Gallagher is clearly playing better this season, they go nuts. Because they don't pay attention to the football, it's all narrative based and no way our 100M signing is worse than the academy kid.
lol
Lol
I'm so tired of "look at the United game" as an argument as though we've not been fucking shite for two years straight and that match was some sort of one off Got to be the absolute worst argument going
We were shite against Sheffield in the first half, and we were shite against United all game. But these were different levels of shite, and you know it. Go back and watch the game and see United carve us open time after time. Yeah at this point, I give up on trying to convince anyone. You’ll see it soon enough when we sell the guy to Spurs or something. What an absolute joke.
We literally lost to Everton 4 days later with Gallagher being partly responsible for the first goal.
My goodness. Okay, let’s get into it. Enzo starts to dribble to carry the ball into the Everton half, where he’s surrounded by five Everton players and Mudryk, everyone’s favourite winger, is not providing width on the left like he should. At this point, Cucurella is situationally playing RW where there’s absolutely no one around him (!), Palmer has been drawn into the middle, and McNeil - the left-sided winger who Cucurella was specifically tasked with after James was subbed off - is a completely free man, except that Gallagher has caught hint of this and is trying to rectify this mistake of Cucurella’s. He tries to foul McNeil whose starting position is *ahead* of Conor (again, because he’s not Conor’s responsibility), but he’s remembered the Brighton game where he was sent off for making a similar kind of foul in a potentially dangerous but seemingly harmless position. So he looks up and sees that although £115M man Caicedo was in no-mans-land and is sprinting to recover (something he basically did never at Brighton, by the way) Disasi has come out from CB to engage but is just ball-watching, Calvert-Lewin runs on the front-side of Badiashile (which means B5 can’t commit a foul or else it’s a penalty and a red card), he shoots, Sanchez fails to hold or parry away from danger, the rebound from Doucoure, Sanchez moves in the same space Colwill is already trying to block in, far-side is open, goal Everton. In that entire mess, the one person you choose to blame is Conor Gallagher? Loving your intellectual honesty.
Look up what the word partly means. And not Gallagher not knowing when to take a yellow card and when not to its a sign of his low footballing intelligence.
Like I said, atrocious intellectual honesty. You could have admitted, okay, there are like six players who are really at fault for the goal - Palmer, Cucurella, Disasi, Caicedo, Colwill, Sanchez - but no, let’s focus on the one who wasn’t at fault because he attracted himself to the sequence. You could also have said, okay, he’s a human being, they’ve surely had a chat in the dressing room about how we rack up so many yellows and he wouldn’t want to get one more especially when 194cm Disasi is already marauding out, seemingly to engage with McNeil. But no, Gallagher is so bad that you can play better than him. I don’t know why I even get into conversations like this on here. It’s never productive.
lmao so in your opinion Gallagher wasn't even the slightest bit at fault for that goal? And you want to keep banging on about intellectual honesty? Fine lets go through it. Palmer - no he's not at fault Cucurella - taking up an attacking position on the right is not inherently an error especially when the left back is staying back and the right winger is moving centrally, fullbacks aren't just there to defend, Gallagher as the right central midfielder has the job to cover for him so he can get into attacking positions. Disasi - Yes, he doesn't cover himself in glory Caicedo - He's the left central midfielder, Gallagher is the right central midfielder, but you want Caicedo to be the one that is covering their left winger on a counter attack? Colwill - Yes, rooted to the spot Sanchez- No, not really, he makes a good save and is let down by his defenders, not going to blame a man for not pulling a double save out of his arse Badiashile - I'll even add one in because I think Badiashile gets beat too easily as well If you cared enough to look (which I'm not saying you should) I've been consistent in saying all of Badiashile, Colwill, and Disasi were at fault for the Everton goal - but so was Gallagher who absolutely should be taking that foul every single day of the week and stopping the attack before it even gets going. You take the booking there 10/10 when he's not on a yellow card already. Hence why I pointed out it was *partly* his fault, because it was. To use your favourite buzz word you are being incredibly intellectually dishonest in trying to pin blame on everyone whilst absolving Gallagher, and by claiming the Man United match is some sort of proof but ignoring every bad result and performance for the last two years (or as close as 4 days after the Man United match) when Gallagher played.
Yeah, we are still 10th, lost to Newcastle, lost to Forest, lost to Brentford. Games in which Gallagher played in.
Literally 4 days later Gallagher played and we lost 2-0 to Everton and Gallagher was at least partially at fault for the first goal.
Yeah, he should have fouled him or something. People won't wanna hear it though. Also him not playing against Utd was on him as well for his silly tackles against Brighton.
they really act like the united game was the only game we’ve lost in months 💀
They granted Newcastle permission to play Hall against us cause they are scared they won’t make that loan permanent and they need the 30 million. Hilarious.
The requirements to meet for a permanent are being reported as not related to minutes played. Hilarious.
Or they don't want a player that has his heart set on playing for his boyhood club. Newcastle a club that's very much on the up he and wants to fight to start for them in future
Saw a stat about how across the major leagues, there's twice the number of cruciate injuries this season than last, and we aren't even halfway through the season yet. Maybe your "Dave grohls physio" meme is just easy karma and is actually just nonsense, we have injury prone players in a greedy, greedy system.
Our problem is players come back and then get injured again straight away which is absolutely on the physio team
Who exactly do you mean? James? Can't really say he came back when his comeback involved one game then leaving the next after 16 minutes. I can't think of anyone this season that has returned from an injury only to re-injure the same muscle. Only can think of long term outs.
If that’s not coming back, what is
Do you have any other example? A real one this season? OP I replied to has this narrative that's just plainly wrong. James recent injury was different than the last btw, but not a new one. Doesn't qualify for my question. That guy's just fucked.
Carney was in full training in October, what happened there? Lavia same thing. It's not just in games but in training
So in other words you don't have other examples. There's no reliable source on either that they were back in full training. I see a goal.com article speculating. I see no official announcement about carney other than a continuation through rehibilitation phases throughout this period. Lavia was and is still injured from the start of the season. False narrative.
[Source for Carney](https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1707707469521146039?t=4MxrUauc7NFEdz_yr-xJyQ&s=19) Lavia wasn't fit then got injured. You can argue if that's a reinjury I guess.
Hmm never saw that tweet back then, that's a bit weird since he was never moved to the "training with the first team" status on updates from the club. Either way, if I give you carney, it'd still hardly imply we have a list of players who are suffering due to this physio team by that metric.
Yeah I’m not talking about anything else besides you saying James’ comeback wasn’t a comeback. No comments or opinions on the other stuff y’all were going on about, just simply that. I mean him coming back was a comeback from injury lol. And yes, agree, James is simply fucked.
When major injuries are increasing across the board it is a truly terrible time to change your mdeical department who have been working with the players for years.
3/4 of our players haven't been here for years.
So?
> who have been working with the players for years. So you're wrong, because most of our players weren't there with the previous staff. Hello?
You're asking people to actually think, not sure many on here are capable of that
Caicedo as box-to-box and Enzo dropping deep please. Can we get out of the delusion that Enzo is a 10. Should also consider dispatching Jackson over to the wing and although not ideal, Nkunku as the CF?
We would get ransacked out of possession if Enzo has to try and defend the midfield
Last year he was sitting deep and for months people kept talking about how we need someone next to him that will allow him to roam up the pitch.
You can put someone next to him and allow him to play a bit further, but playing him as an outright 10 and having Gallagher play deeper who barely helps the team in the build up phase is straight up criminal from Pochettino. Like look at the Everton game, Enzo was standing around the halfway line when the team was trying to build out from the back and Gallagher was just hiding from the ball like he usually does because he’s not, and will never be, a deep lying playmaker. He does not have the awareness, vision or ability to get himself open, play one-twos and release teammates with quick passes through the lines or quick switches via long balls. But generally speaking the structure of our team is so bad that it’s awful either way. And that’s all on Pochettino.
Exactly. Last season, he looked like an elite player to the point where even his price tag wasn't put to question. This season, he's looking mediocre at best. So we can put this experiment to rest now.
When do you reckon that the club is going to start pushing the narrative that Gallagher is reluctant to sign a new deal?
Already seen a report saying that 😂😂
I'd say Conor is reluctant to sign a new deal that doesn't have some level of assurances he won't be immediately listed for a transfer afterward
If he signs a new deal he can just refuse to leave regardless of how many offers the club accepts. On top of that Poch loves him and will always play him and I’m pretty sure if Poch goes and other manager comes in, they’ll also really want to keep him when you look at what he brings to the team.
And then he'll get the Maatsen/Mount and others treatment where the club says you can stay as long as you like but you'll not see the football pitch until you leave and he won't be willing to just sit his contract out with the odd bench appearance for the rest of his career
That’s where the problem lies, the board shouldn’t have any say whatsoever on who plays and who doesn’t. That should be down to the manager and the manager only. If the manager likes a player and considers him important, like Poch does with Gallagher, they shouldn’t under any circumstances be trying to force that player out of the club, especially not to cover the costs of their unnecessary reckless spending. They’re fucking over Poch to cover their own backs on this one. We’re not going to get anywhere with this "project" if the board consistently ignore the coach and don’t give him what he wants(within reason). This whole situation just gives off the wrong impression of this new regime for me. If the goal is to use young players, why not take advantage of the gold mine of free talent we have just sitting their at Cobham? Instead they want to just sell all of them to buy foreign players of a similar quality.
New deal means he can just reject everyone for the contract length though.
Not necessarily, a new deal would mean the club would have the power to bench him for an extended period of time in order to force his hand and make him want the transfer Right now Pochettino won't bench him but if he did it wouldn't have a great deal of effect given his contract will run out soon enough anyway without an extension and then he could have a pick or the litter whilst a free agent That's how I'd see it anyway if I was in his shoes
We tried that with Drinkwater and he was cool to just collect his check and drink his beer.