Balogun surely not playing league or CL though. So he’s league cup fodder. If I was him I’d probably look to leave.
Its hard for a third choice striker to get many minutes considering we play one up top.
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Lookman? He’s having a great season for Atalanta who are scoring goals for fun. He seems to be another one of those players who can’t quite hack it in the PL but thrive in Italy
This was our bench on the final game before the January window;
This is likely to be our bench moving forward;
Turner, Tomiyasu, Tierney, Kiwior, Holding, Jorginho, Vieira, ESR, Trossard and Nketiah / Jesus when Jesus is back from injury.
I know it stings to miss out on Mudryk / Caicedo but when all is said and done we are so much better equipped moving forward.
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I agree.
It might not have been a spectacular window but we have bought players for the positions that needed filling and two of the signings are PL and international, experienced level.
To get what we needed for around 50m is very good business considering what Chelsea have spent.
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I think it Hojlund actually, but great to see Lookman doing well.
Seems like Atalanta have put a nice team together!
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Looks like a great prospect too he’s gonna do well
That’s a good post and good point actually.
Fair enough that’s made my outlook on the window a little better.
Our first 11 is great, up there with the best.
But we’ve made some pretty good value for money depth signings that should hopefully bolster the squad for the 2nd half of the season.
I’m still really worried about Partey, and that after him there is only now Jorginho before we have to call up the academy lads but still. It’s better than it was before.
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Yeah our starting XI on current form is Top 3 in the world tbh, so it’s not that that really needed any changing.
And in Kiwior, Trossard and Jorginho we’ve got an excellent mix of potential and experience in three positions we lacked quality depth.
Our bench looks pretty stacked now, and all of a sudden our second XI looks substantially stronger as well albeit significantly weaker than our first XI.
The bench actually looks pretty respectable now, especially with Jesus and Esr coming back.
Turner, Tierney, Tomi, Kiwior, ESR, Trossard, Vieira, Jorginho, Jesus/Nketiah.
That’s pretty good. I know jury is still out on Veiria but I think he’s shown some really good flashes.
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Accomplishing what we did for the short term without making any signings with big mistake potential in the medium-to-long-term is an underrated aspect of our window IMO.
It is clear that our hope is to eventually add some truly top young players to round out this squad and that we have the money to do it. We couldn’t get top targets in a January window when teams don’t want to sell those kinds of players and Chelsea’s historic spending spree made things harder than usual. No big deal, that’s going to happen in January. The only way for it to go really wrong would have been to react by instead spending our money on subpar targets and locking them into 5-6 year deals on big wages, so that they’d occupy that space in the squad for the rest of the current cycle. But we didn’t go out and buy a Richarlison type player when we missed on Mudryk or a Kalvin Phillips when we missed on Caicedo, we got Trossard and Jorginho for cheap money and relatively short term contractual commitments. Its all still open to add a 70-80m CM/DM player like Rice or Caicedo this summer and eventually, maybe in summer 2024, to add another top level CM and maybe a big name attacking player too.
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Yeah it’s been a very shrewd and pragmatic transfer window which I’m totally here for
Why are we not tapping up any City players ?
Man City supporters are accusing us of using them as our feeder club. 
That’s basically why I see this as a successful window on paper. If Trossard and CR can eat minutes effectively down the stretch that’s perfect. If they actually contribute, well that’s gravy. You can maybe roll out some B team lineups in the EL group stage but you can’t run a single pivot of ASL in the CL group stage unless you’re looking to get embarrassed.
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People maybe don’t mention it enough, Edu played a big part in the Invincible season. Was always ready to step in for Vieira od Gilberto… I always prefered Gilberto because he was more dynamic and direct, but you couldn’t deny Edu was a top player, brought more technical ability and creativity in our midfield, was the closest thing to Cesc before Cesc, was able to keep the ball under pressure… A good athlete (looked mediocre compared to Gilberto and Vieira) too.
Was sad too see him leave in 2005 although I was aware he was too good to be on the bench and wanted him to do well at Valencia. Sad the injuries prevented it.
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What a man
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Ehhh. His hit rate has been excellent lately but the sportswashing is something I can do without. I hope we don’t renew with them. I’d rather have Angry Birds or Tinder on the sleeve than Visit Rwanda.
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If we ever change sleeve sponsor i’d guess it would be PRIME
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The energy drink or the evil mega corporation?
The drink