I don’t have the answer to the question above, I wish I did.
Week after week we talk about who could be coming, how likely it is. It’s absolutely paramount we strengthen our squad ahead of next season. We won the league last season with a team very much greater than the sum of its parts. Victor Moses and Gary Cahill are filled with effort but they’re not world class performers. Nemanja Matic is not the force of two years ago, cesc is suspect defensively and Marcos Alonso isn’t in the top five of left wing backs in European football. Despite this, Conte found a formation that worked and won the league at a canter. The pre season narrative was all about Manchester. Conte and Chelsea ensured that they were left in the dust, made to look under performing and lax compared to the well oiled machine of south west London.
Despite winning the league last year there is a common misconception that last summer was a success. David Luiz was laughed out of the building when he Re joined late last summer, whilst Batshuaiyi was an expensive sub. Kante joined yes, but he had a well known release clause which all we had to do was meet. None of the 50p incremental bids that we normally push in front of selling clubs. Bonucci was rumoured but didn’t happen. We weren’t willing to match Napoli’s valuation of Koulibaly. We spent a lot of time being frustrated that clubs weren’t willing to hand over their players to us.
The summer before was similar. Jose Mourinho won the league, again at a canter in 2015 and said as early as February that the summer would be an important one in terms of strengthening. He made it abundantly clear that he wanted Reinforcements. What we got were a bunch of Championship level defenders and a back up goalkeeper. Mourinho had his own issues in the autumn of 2015, a lot of which he brought on himself, but he certainly wasn’t helped by the Board.
Strangely enough, the summer of 2014 led to our first title win in 5 years. Why? We got our business done quickly and efficiently. Courtouis was already at the club, Costa and Fabregas were done in June and away we went. We stormed out of the blocks after a successful summer and established a lead we were never to lose. Flash back 10 years before to Jose’s first summer and Carvalho, Robben, Cech and Drogba were all done before July was out. We won the league at a canter.
There are a lot of Chelsea board apologists on both social media and the internet. People with close links to the board and the management at the Bridge who seem to think that our ability to sell players for a lot of money means we are well run. As a business we may be but our ability to sign players without release clauses is f*cking terrible. We don’t have an idea of how to negotiate with selling clubs, arrogantly believing that clubs should just hand over their players once we come calling. See what happened with John Stones. We went in with a derisory 30m. It got rejected and we got told Everton wanted 45m. We went back with 32m. We pissed them off and that was it. City went in the summer after and no matter what you think of John Stones as a footballer, they paid what Everton wanted and signed the player whilst we signed Papy and Michael Hector.
We have the best manager in the world. If we have any designs on keeping him we need to sort our shit out and provide him with the players he wants.
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