I thought Azpilacueta was out of contact but now I read this:
However, a performance-related clause in his existing agreement has now been exercised. It is understood he reached the required amount of appearances earlier this month to ensure his agreement, which was signed in December 2018, has automatically been extended until the summer of 2023
Yeah, it’s a story that has been reported strangely. A few outlets picked up on that automatic extension being activated, but many others continued running the idea that he’d move to barca regardless, despite what Chelsea were saying about refusing to consider letting their captain leave.
Can’t lie, the more I’m seeing (and hearing) of Tuchel, the less impressed I’ve been. Used to be that I thought of him as close to an elite manager as you can get while he was at Dortmund, revitalising the side as much as could be expected. Then the stint of PSG is one which pretty much makes me sympathise with any manager that has to take that shitshow of a job (or maybe not considering the millions they get paid for it). When he came to Chelsea, I wasn’t happy, always wonder how top managers would work under a whimsical owner like Abramovich, but that was naivety. He paid well, and their careers are in short stints anyway.
He always looks smart when things are going well, but his comments when things don’t go well can be bizarre, and I’m not sure if they have a positive effect. In the second half of last season, he changed the tune from ‘the ownership problems don’t matter to players’ to ‘it can’t be helped that the ownership situation affects the players’ within one single week.
Then recently in the window when it became kind of apparent that Chelsea were trying to flog off Werner in a swap deal to somebody (anybody?), he reacted with some comments, and then Tuchel reacted to his reaction, and on and on it went, until it was clear to everybody that there’s beginnings of schisms there. So not only do you have depleted squads with players having left and couple of more wanting to leave, you then drive a wedge between yourself and existing players. Maybe not a smart move?
It has a heavy feel of its-everybody-else’s-fault-but-mine-itis. As an elite coach, if you don’t have the balls to hold up your hands and say ‘it was my fault that I knew about our ownership situation since February, and the players we had running out of contract, but I did not identify any targets, did not try to get verbal communications with them, decided to go full gung-ho with the new owner thinking we could do it all ourselves without any staff to support us, then cry about it later when it didn’t work out’ then you risk losing a lot of respect of you own players I think.
Boehly has absolute no head in the club, other than the operational and financial side, so I expect whatever footballing decisions are happening, are being done at Tuchel’s word. So far, it feels like they’ve desperately tried to be like Abramovich’s Chelsea with their summer targets, and failed. They’ll get another centre-back minimum, but still don’t think it’ll keep them from having a worse season than last year.
Weird move. He’ll be sent out on loan before the ink’s dry.
Extremely weird.
They are changing things up
By spending!
Carney nooooo!
I think a lot of what you say about Tuchel seems right, but this section is unfair. They were unable to even negotiate with their own players to stay such was the uncertainty around their ability to pay them. It was simply not within his capacity to go and do anything about it. I think we can criticize his man management of the situation, but I dont know what good options he had there. The only situation in top level football I can think of that would be comparable in terms of a manager potentially having his team ripped from him was Juve with their 2006 relegation, and Capello responded to that by resigning so at least the new manager knew he was walking into a shit show in which many of their best players would leave before they played their next game.
What does seem interesting is the way Barca dragged Chelsea in the unveiling of Kounde. They made clear that getting the deal done was really difficult and Kounde had an attractive offer from Chelsea he could have taken, but he waited (not patiently) for Barca to sort themselves out so they could get the deal done. Kounde didnt refute any of it.
It was basically a shot saying the player had zero interest in going to chelsea and would rather gamble than take that offer.
Yea, thats fair tbh, I might have been too harsh. I think I wrote that post after I heard about his “rant” the first time, and I thought ‘What is this guy complaining about? We could all see the problems Chelsea were going to face in the summer window for months now’. But the club was (and arguably still is to an extent) in a lot of shambles when it comes to the internal structure, so its not just his fault for all that hasn’t gone well till now.
I’m just glad that at least till now, Boehly has not been able to make what I think would count as their most important signing - the sporting director. If they do get a really experienced head as their sporting director, then you’d have an actual footballing brain channelling all of Boehly’s transfer aggression into pinpoint laser guided missiles to get targets they want for Tuchel. And that’d scare me to be honest, because these guys’ spending power seems to be more than FSG can compete with.
If you want a quick lesson in arrogance click onto any Twitter feed about Cucurella and see the Chelsea fans absolutely furious that Brighton haven’t immediately rolled out the red carpet now that they’ve bid for him.
I had in mind we might sign Chukwuemeka, mostly because I hoped he would become another Bellingham. He seemed very highly rated.
Now that he’s at Chelsea I hope he goes the way of lots of their players who get swallowed up in their extensive loan/farming system, and if he does go on to be world class, that we pick him up in a few years for a modest sum and make them regret bulk buying players and not really knowing what they’ve got on their books.
Cucurella deal done
Mind boggling deal in my opinion. 50m for a bog standard wing back, and losing one of the best CB prospects in the country at the same time. Absolutely genius.
Big shout but Ian Maatsen, currently at Burnley on loan from Chelsea, will prove himself a better player than Cucurella.
New owners same old Chelsea signing players for players sake.
Brighton be like
If they only started taking points off Man City instead of being a bogey side to us, I would start liking Brighton very much.
Don’t Chelsea have Ben Chilwell? Are they trying to outdo Man City for money spent on fullbacks?