Chelsea 2024/25

Rajiztar said:
I wonder what's the catch still youngsters signed for us despite we used them as soulless properties. I don't know the answer.
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The latest youth goalie Mike Penders for example has two first team appearances for Genk and is now getting an 8 year deal from the club.

Even if his salary is marginal at best for Chelsea's overall salary range, say ie. £15-20K a week, that's still a life changing amount of money across the full 8 years for a young lad and he's guaranteed to get all of it whether he makes it or not. It's not hard to see why that can seem too good to turn down for a teenage player.

In reality his development would've been best served signing a long term deal at Genk and hoping he can impress enough over the next few years to earn himself a move where he earns multiple times the salary Chelsea are now giving him but in that scenario there are no guarantees he ever sees any of that money.
 
aeh1991 said:
And 60m for Mount to us who could have left them for free this summer..

But still, I got this feeling they spend much more than what they regenerate, no?
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Yeah, but in essence sales go in the books straight away whereas buys are spread over length of contract up to 5 years now.

So basically if you sell a Mount at £60M pure profit, and buy a player at £60M to replace him, it's actually only £12M you book each year, plus his wages I think. So in terms of PSR for that year, you can buy 3 or 4 players at that value for a Mount.

The worry is that the accumulative figure you owe keeps adding up, and the well for selling dries up a bit, or you keep failing to get Champions League football.
 
I think Chelsea have more first team goalkeepers listed in their squad currently than we have midfielders listed on ours.
 
Rajiztar said:
I wonder what's the catch still youngsters signed for us despite we used them as soulless properties. I don't know the answer.
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Every player at every club is a soulless property.

And the reason they all want to join? We make them millionaires and secure their financial futures for life.
 
GoonerBear said:
The worry is that the accumulative figure you owe keeps adding up, and the well for selling dries up a bit, or you keep failing to get Champions League football.
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But even with a £1B+ overall spend the accumulative amortisation figure hasn't risen anywhere near as much as one would easily think.

That is because, rightly or wrongly, the whole squad of the Abramovich era was ditched and we weren't exactly talking about small money signings there either. In the last season of the Abramovich regime the club clocked like £160M a year in amortisations which have now been removed due to all those players being sold. Or rather almost all, as Lukaku and Kepa are still stinking up the place.

After the summer 2023 transfer window, once all the purchases and sales were finalized, the accumulative figure had only risen to somewhere in the region of £180M a year so not a huge increase over the previous year's accounts. The signings made this summer have once again raised that bar by around £25M a year but still it's only around £40-45M more than pre-Clearlake.

Now if the club can finally rid themselves of Lukaku and Kepa this summer, the overall figure would then go down by almost £30M a year (£19.5M/y for Lukaku and £10M/y for Kepa to be exact) after which the accumulative figure would at most be around 10% more than the 2021/22 season. So despite all the reckless spending and youth hoarding there hasn't been a huge increase in amortisation costs overall unless the club decide to go on a crazy spending spree in the last few weeks of the transfer window, which I definitely wouldn't put past them.

Right now the high amortisation costs still needs to be offset with the infamous pure profit sales, just as player sales were needed during the Abramovich years. If the club fails to make the UCL this season, then more sales will once again be needed next summer and that's where things can get a bit tricky because like you said the academy pipeline is drying up. The club's plan obviously is to start making money from selling some of the youth players signed for the loan army (ie. Hutchinson sale this year) but for that to happen the youth players need to have properly successful loans and because of the loan limits that might not be possible with all of them. Like @WeePat said it's a grim way to run a football club, but it is what it is and there's not a whole lot us fans can do about it.
 
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This new goalie is 6'6", maybe they think he's the next Courtois.
 
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Rnd898 said:
But even with a £1B+ overall spend the accumulative amortisation figure hasn't risen anywhere near as much as one would easily think.

That is because, rightly or wrongly, the whole squad of the Abramovich era was ditched and we weren't exactly talking about small money signings there either. In the last season of the Abramovich regime the club clocked like £160M a year in amortisations which have now been removed due to all those players being sold. Or rather almost all, as Lukaku and Kepa are still stinking up the place.

After the summer 2023 transfer window, once all the purchases and sales were finalized, the accumulative figure had only risen to somewhere in the region of £180M a year so not a huge increase over the previous year's accounts. The signings made this summer have once again raised that bar by around £25M a year but still it's only around £40-45M more than pre-Clearlake.

Now if the club can finally rid themselves of Lukaku and Kepa this summer, the overall figure would then go down by almost £30M a year (£19.5M/y for Lukaku and £10M/y for Kepa to be exact) after which the accumulative figure would at most be around 10% more than the 2021/22 season. So despite all the reckless spending and youth hoarding there hasn't been a huge increase in amortisation costs overall unless the club decide to go on a crazy spending spree in the last few weeks of the transfer window, which I definitely wouldn't put past them.

Right now the high amortisation costs still needs to be offset with the infamous pure profit sales, just as player sales were needed during the Abramovich years. If the club fails to make the UCL this season, then more sales will once again be needed next summer and that's where things can get a bit tricky because like you said the academy pipeline is drying up. The club's plan obviously is to start making money from selling some of the youth players signed for the loan army (ie. Hutchinson sale this year) but for that to happen the youth players need to have properly successful loans and because of the loan limits that might not be possible with all of them. Like @WeePat said it's a grim way to run a football club, but it is what it is and there's not a whole lot us fans can do about it.
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Yeah, I had no idea of the figures involved, but I didn't think you were in any trouble, and the fact you still sell really well definitely helps with this regard.

That's why I mention if the well runs dry from the academy, but perhaps buying all these young players help with that, but I suppose they won't be as Pure Profit like the guys from the academy if you've had to pay out reasonable fees for them in the first place.
 
If these kids mainly flop and there's a downturn we'll be in deep shit in a few years. The debt is on the parent company, all this spending is with borrowed money.

At least Clearlake can't sell the bridge thanks to Bates.
 
Bale Bale Bale said:
This new goalie is 6'6", maybe they think he's the next Courtous.
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Raised by the same club as Courtois too.

I've no doubt this Penders guy is a highly promising young keeper and he may well end up being a top keeper eventually if everything goes according to plan with his development. The thing is though, the club have now spent roughly £80M on goalkeepers in the last two years alone without getting a single ready-made top class goalkeeper for the first team's immediate needs. For that kind of money the club could have just bought Costa, Maignan or just about any other already great goalkeeper instead of buying all these gambles and hoping one of them will pay off in a few years.

GoonerBear said:
Yeah, I had no idea of the figures involved, but I didn't think you were in any trouble, and the fact you still sell really well definitely helps with this regard.

That's why I mention if the well runs dry from the academy, but perhaps buying all these young players help with that, but I suppose they won't be as Pure Profit like the guys from the academy if you've had to pay out reasonable fees for them in the first place.
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Yeah, most of the foreign import youths won't be "pure profit sales" if/when the time comes to cash in on some of those players but just about all of them have been signed for fees ranging €10-20M so after a few years their remaining book values will be quite reasonable. Say a player's been signed for €15M and gets sold after a couple of somewhat successful loan deals for €20M it's still more than 10 mil profit on the balance sheet. Any potential loan fees get added on top of that along the way to cover for some of the amortisation costs during the loan years. Add some decent sell-on fees for the sales and it's possible new money will keep coming in long after the players have been sold. And if they turn out hugely successful with the loans they can just get called up to the first team and be cheap as chips compared to ready-made first teamers being brought in for big fees.

If there were no loan limits in place I could see it being a profitable, yet still quite cynical way of running a club. But with the FIFA loan rules being as they are I don't see this model as sustainable in the scale Chelsea are trying to do it with. There are bound to be a few kids who get stuck in between with no good loan deals available for them, which will see their values plummet to almost zero while still having plenty of value left on the club's books.
 
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WeePat said:
There are a couple of reasons I think we could be better than last season. The main one is we have our injured players back. So, Nkunku, Lavia, James, Fofana, even Enzo who played injured the second half of the season until he underwent surgery. That's a good portion of starting players missing in action last season who will hopefully be fit and ready for this season.

Another reason I think we could potentially be better is Palmer. I'm excited to see if he can maintain the levels he showed last season. Madueke looks much more threatening now compared to when we signed him. Jackson too. So the young players we've signed, some of them are improving.

I'm concerned about the defence. We've shipped 12 goals in 4 preseason games. We've scored 9, so in the attack we're OK but defensively we're just all over the place, especially when we're in possession trying to beat a press. Probably half the goals we've conceded have come from a mistake in possession.

So I'll choose to stay optimistic going into the season, until I see enough evidence that it isn't going to work.
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I suspect you’re going to have an eth season where the midfield and defence will look like they don’t know each other
 
golden_blunder said:
I suspect you’re going to have an eth season where the midfield and defence will look like they don’t know each other
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But wasn't the problem with Man Utd & ETH last season that there were just too many injuries to get the best out of the team, and at the same time even Casemiro started to show his age? Constantly having to chop and change things around because of injuries can make a huge difference in team cohesion, as your lot and ours found out the hard way last season.

If Chelsea can keep key defenders and midfielders fit, it's just a matter of getting them familiarized with the game system ie. knowing how deep/high the defensive line needs to be and where the midfielders should position themselves at all phases of the game to minimize the risk of getting caught with mistakes in possession like we've seen plenty of during pre-season. The players aren't actually bad, well most of them aren't at least, so I remain somewhat confident they can learn the game system once we start playing games with a consistent XI. But again, if the injury problems continue with a similar scale as last season then all bets are off.
 
Rnd898 said:
But wasn't the problem with Man Utd & ETH last season that there were just too many injuries to get the best out of the team, and at the same time even Casemiro started to show his age? Constantly having to chop and change things around because of injuries can make a huge difference in team cohesion, as your lot and ours found out the hard way last season.

If Chelsea can keep key defenders and midfielders fit, it's just a matter of getting them familiarized with the game system ie. knowing how deep/high the defensive line needs to be and where the midfielders should position themselves at all phases of the game to minimize the risk of getting caught with mistakes in possession like we've seen plenty of during pre-season. The players aren't actually bad, well most of them aren't at least, so I remain somewhat confident they can learn the game system once we start playing games with a consistent XI. But again, if the injury problems continue with a similar scale as last season then all bets are off.
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Partly but also because of inflexible tactics (in fact I’d argue it was mostly due to that). The question will be if Maresca is prepared to change it up if it’s not working. Preseason Chelsea looked a mess at times in my opinion
 
Clubs selling their youngsters to Chelsea will request putting higher and higher sell on clauses.....at least I would.
 
golden_blunder said:
Partly but also because of inflexible tactics (in fact I’d argue it was mostly due to that). The question will be if Maresca is prepared to change it up if it’s not working. Preseason Chelsea looked a mess at times in my opinion
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Fair enough.

Granted I've only seen two full games of our pre-season (Man City and Celtic) and for the rest I've relied on extended highlights footage but to me it's mostly looked like the positioning of the players is nowhere near where Maresca would prefer it to be. The back line have played way too high up, perhaps partly because that's how things were under Poch and pressing from high up the pitch and turnovers were key parts of how the game was played. Pair that with pre-season fitness levels and an ever-changing lineup of players and it's easy to see how a single misplaced pass in possession can very quickly lead to a fast counter-attack goal. At least on paper that should get better with more training, more games and a more stable lineup, wouldn't you say?

There are definitely some question marks over Maresca's tactical flexibility if things don't work out, and I do believe that was one of the points of criticisim Leicester fans had with him as well when things started turning a bit shit towards the back end of the season, but I just think it's way too early to worry about that based on a mere few training matches. If the defense still looks as bad in a couple of months as it's looked in pre-season, I'll start to question his tactics a bit more but we're definitely not there yet. Of course it would be better to have a more comfortable pre-season than a bad one, but for me bad pre-season results are no reason to start dooming and glooming.
 
Rnd898 said:
Fair enough.

Granted I've only seen two full games of our pre-season (Man City and Celtic) and for the rest I've relied on extended highlights footage but to me it's mostly looked like the positioning of the players is nowhere near where Maresca would prefer it to be. The back line have played way too high up, perhaps partly because that's how things were under Poch and pressing from high up the pitch and turnovers were key parts of how the game was played. Pair that with pre-season fitness levels and an ever-changing lineup of players and it's easy to see how a single misplaced pass in possession can very quickly lead to a fast counter-attack goal. At least on paper that should get better with more training, more games and a more stable lineup, wouldn't you say?

There are definitely some question marks over Maresca's tactical flexibility if things don't work out, and I do believe that was one of the points of criticisim Leicester fans had with him as well when things started turning a bit shit towards the back end of the season, but I just think it's way too early to worry about that based on a mere few training matches. If the defense still looks as bad in a couple of months as it's looked in pre-season, I'll start to question his tactics a bit more but we're definitely not there yet. Of course it would be better to have a more comfortable pre-season than a bad one, but for me bad pre-season results are no reason to start dooming and glooming.
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You’re right off course, preseason is more important to fitness and integrating new players.

First season is also too soon to start outright moaning but you will make first impression judgments which could be hard to shift for some fans if he’s fighting a battle tactically with the squad 6 months into his tenure.

ETH somewhat followed ‘Ole ball’ before implementing his own style in season 2. Where our problems started as we didn’t have the right squad available to implement what he wanted and he didn’t show any for flexibility to work differently until ironically the last couple of matches when we won the cup. So this season will be interesting for both our teams
 
Looks like Pedro Neto could well be on his way to Chelsea for about £60M.

Class player but is another left-footed right winger REALLY what we need? Injury record is a bit worrying too. I could see a place for him if Palmer is going to play more centrally this season as suggested, which would leave only Madueke as a real option at RW as things stand. I suppose if there was a place being earmarked for Olise earlier in the summer, there can be one for Neto as well.

I guess that's Madueke fecked when Estevao and Paez arrive next year though?
 
Honestly this is just ridiculous now. Embarrassment of a club.
 
Who’s going to get sold or loaned out? And how many guys do they need to cut? Surely there are some decent players that a club can get for a discount
 
Can you buy some of our players? I heard Michael Keane is decent.
 
They have to stop now surely. They had 6 new players to bed into the first team last summer, they're at 4 again this summer not even counting the extras like Anselmino and Veiga who could just be squad players for now
 
I genuinely struggle to keep up with Chelsea as a team. How do fans gain any sort of attachment to a side that is in constant change, with players flying in then flying back out just as quick. It's such a weird club now.
 
I don't get it, can't see how he's better than our existing options. We're just stacking up young and pretty average players.

Really think there's a good possibility we end up like Everton in a few years, on the brink of administration. Need the players bought to mainly turn in to world beaters and for football not to be affected by the global economic problems.
 
How are they affording the salaries? How can they keep spunking this money with no CL or even Europa league football for 2 seasons now?

Just have a feeling it’ll implode.
 
Go on, buy another keeper, it's genuinely funny at this point.
 
What the feck is going on at Chelsea? How many players could they possibly want to sign? It's fecking mental.is there any strategy at all to any of this?
 
Camy89 said:
How are they affording the salaries? How can they keep spunking this money with no CL or even Europa league football for 2 seasons now?

Just have a feeling it’ll implode.
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I find it genuinely crazy what they’ve done this past couple of years. Surely will come back to bite them at some point.
 


Maybe the plan is to get 11 players in every position. So we can experiment fielding an entire team of players who specialize in just one position?
 
I wonder if there are any Chelsea fans pining for the stability from when a murderous, mob boss oligarch owned the club.
 
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