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Vincent's avatar

"But one thing they won’t do, is sell world class or potential world class players and damage the first team, because all that does is lose them money."

But you forgot that these world class or potential world class players can force their way out of the club if the SDs and owners dont fix up their act quickly and the club remain in midtable.

Most of all, I dont think our SDs are decent people given how easily they feed lies to journos about loyal players such as Mount and now Gallagher. I get it that ruthlessness is required if the club s gonna make it to the top again, but I dont see the SDs' ruthlessness paired with prudent and wise acquisitions either.

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Kenny's avatar

Great article

Totally agree

The champions league blackhole revenue was created by the new owners hastily implementing mass change when only slight adjustments were required to a team that had just won the CL

This resulted in a bloated squad & discontent amongst players that set Potter up for failure from the onset

The rest has just snowballed from there & the club has been in a period of losing their identity

I do believe they are ambitious but they are now having to make unpopular choices with trades to make up that shortfall in revenue

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Nick Gage's avatar

They have already damaged the first team with the first transfer window maybe beyond repair for a while. You can’t use the mistakes of the past to justify the mistakes now. I was critical of the previous regime in some of the outgoings in particular. The new owners can’t even get right the off the pitch things they were supposed to be experts at so it’s not surprising the footballing side isn’t too good at the moment.

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Michael Granne's avatar

Tremendously well said. Trev and Connor even at their peak are squad or slightly better. If you can get a good fee and the PPr rege give you an incentive to sell home grown and buy others(which they currently seem to do), why not?

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Andy Setterfield's avatar

As always a good read.

My point of view though is that it’s not that I don’t want the owners to sell our good players to balance the books it’s that I want to see them get the clubs priorities right.

Instead of scooping up all the young talent as the priority they should fix the holes in the team first with improvements on what we’ve got and bearing in mind they’ve spent another 305 million + on young talent this time round so I’m led to believe if that had been spent on the correct 1st team players CL football would have been a lot closer to being in the bag.

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BigNige63's avatar

Couldn’t agree more with Craig’s,please allow logic to shape the narrative. The Owners track record is exemplary and proven in the sports industry BUT typically has required a 4-5 year turnaround. Then the success has been substantial. They are not the Glazers they are committed businessmen that have already invested in Chelsea and would be the first to acknowledge they have learnt from a number of early, poorer decisions on players.

There is a time for the emotions BUT let’s keep the true objective in mind which is our team winning trophies and playing football that others can only dream about. ⚽️💙👍🏻

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Fraser Southey's avatar

Interesting reading this in the light of recent events fuelled by online misinformation.

Here we have an article that starts with a confession - of feeling angry about how events ‘appear’ on the basis of very restricted information and hearsay.

Rings bells for me and is perhaps a lesson to you guys who write for this pod - set your bar for sources/info bit higher.

There’s been a Chelsea social media ‘mini-riot’ on the basis of Conor/Chalo - situations about which we actually know f**k all. This leads to anger against club… Bad vibes before season even starts etc

We can do better.

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Dom Chapman's avatar

Always a balanced and informative read 👍

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Gregory Malphurs's avatar

All accurate and sensible, til the last part where you say "fans have tried to be patient." No patience whatsoever. For example: Poch last season thru January.

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Use It Or Lose It's avatar

Excellent as always….. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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David's avatar

You hit the nail on the head as usual, Score.

If this season doesn’t go to plan then it’s going to be very hard for them to turn things around with the fans, particularly as Clearlake will realistically be looking to cash in part of their investment after 10 years.

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Umair's avatar

Wait till they do sell them and then you will find some other reason to defend the ownership!

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Craige Coren's avatar

BANG 💥 You have done it again.

You have hit that nail on the head!!!

I have been highlighting for weeks/months that selling players from the Academy is nothing new and we all forget some of the disastrous transfers that were linked with Romans era. Some of which the new ownership are still having to deal with a.k.a. Lukaku.

The reality is the world has changed since Roman change that world in terms of football with his methodology which has never been seen before. He had a bottomless pit of money and didn’t mind spending it for which we were all grateful for the world and more importantly, the rules have changed and we now have to be compliant and follow them, just as every other club has to.

Add to your excellent article you could add that we are not unique in the way we are with a fast majority of Premier League clubs as well as the main European leaks following a similar pattern. You could argue that because of the quality of our Academy that we are better equipped than many others, to follow this pathway.

The list of examples you give should highlight to everybody that shoots from the hip that this is exactly the same process that we have encounter for the past 10 years. Finally you are 100% right in that whether people like or dislike our new ownership, they are serious businessmen who know how to run business in a way that we have not seen at our club before, and are going to ensure that we redeveloped the club into a force to be reckoned with, but we all have to accept that will take time

Thank you once again The Score for your carefully prepared, well written and researched article. I’ll be looking carefully to see who likes your words that have been negative elsewhere!

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Ozboy's avatar

I more or less agree with all that. Don’t forget we also sold Salah and De Bruyne for peanuts and let Mata go after he was player of the season. I left a forum recently because too much negativity, hate for American owners, hate for the coach and the consistent whinging about every player except Cole Palmer. I’m here basically to enjoy chatting. Criticism of course but not unrelenting negativity.

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Craige Coren's avatar

Well said, I support what you say 100% and of who they have been times. I have thought about leaving this forum because the same type of negativity. Me leaving has also been suggested by some because of my more positive attitude and outlook which others do not want to agree with. Thanks for joining the voice of reason group.

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Jay's avatar

We'll see. When we're struggling at this same time next year cause we've bought 532 teenagers who'll never play for us and we need to raise £100m those will be the first names on the board.

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Karan Dhar's avatar

Rules becomes a bit more lenient from next year so we will see…

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