Much has been said about the way Chelsea are performing in this window, and there has been a lot of frustration from fans who think we are just standing by and losing out on players to other top teams. If we take a look at last season, we won the league months before the season ended and there was a significant gap in class between us and the other top teams – we essentially played the second half of the season in 2nd gear, so was there any reason for us to go out and start breaking transfer records and essentially disrupting the current group of players?
The biggest task for Jose and his team was to replace any outgoing players and we did that quite quickly with Begovic & Falcao – you can almost call this an upgrade, both significantly younger than the players they replaced. The ‘only’ other positions we needed strengthening was arguably in the middle of our defence, although Zouma made some great appearances last year and will feature more regularly this season we hope, and then in the middle of our midfield where I feel we get outplayed in Europe heavily.
So, who is ‘winning’ this window, let’s take a look.
Manchester United
1. Morgan Schneiderlin £25m
2. Bastian Schweinstiger £14m
3. Memphis Depay £25m
4. Matteo Darmian £14.4m
TOTAL: £78.4m
United look like they could be our biggest competitor next year, signings like Schweinstiger and Schneiderlin fix exactly what was wrong with there team last season, and if they keep hold of Di Maria there attack will look tasty with the addition of Depay & an incoming striker.
Schweinstiger may have lost his legs but his experience and grit is something to be scared of, while Schneiderlin is a great signing to fill in where Carrick left. It will be interesting to see how Depay settles to life in the Premier League, he looks a very physical player and think he will find his feet very quickly.
Manchester City
1. Raheem Sterling £49m
2. Fabian Delph £8m
3. Patrick Roberts £8m
4. Enes Unal £2m
TOTAL: £67m
Will City bounce back after an off season? They had one of, if not the best squads in the league last season but too many big money signings haven’t worked out the last few years and now they are left with quite an old squad.
I think they will really miss the likes of Milner for when the going gets tough – Sterling is a good purchase but maybe not for that money and if they do not sell some players on they are going to get penalised by FIFA once again. It’s a shame that Delph is just filling the homegrown quota and will feature sometimes from the bench, I still think they lack something defensively in midfield.
Arsenal
Petr Čech £10m
TOTAL: £10m
Arsenal have had a quiet window so far and I think they still need a lot of work – a decent CB to partner Koscielny would be a start and a decent CDM would give them a massive leg up after securing Cech from us for £10m.
Liverpool
1. James Milner £0m
2. Nathaniel Clyne £12.5
3. Joe Gomez £3.5m
4. Adam Bogdan £0m
5. Roberto Firmino £29m
6. Danny Ings £10m
TOTAL: £55m
Brendan Rodgers really really weak point, apart from closing out a season – really is his purchases. This is a guy who spunked his Suarez money on mediocre players and also looks like he will do the same with Sterlings. Rodgers to me seems very deluded, his post match interviews are ridiculous and if you think about the decision to spend money on Balotelli who every knew would do nothing for them just proves my point.
Milner and Clyne are good signings, but are they great? Are Liverpool fans shouting from the rooftops that they signed Ings? I mean come on.. Liverpool will struggle to finish 5/6th never mind 4th.
Chelsea
1. Nathan £4.5m
2. Radamel Falcao £0m
3. Asmir Begovic £8m
TOTAL: £12.5m
Our business so far has been a little worrying I suppose – but that was after we signed Fabregas and Costa before a ball was kicked in the World Cup last year, so taking things slow this year shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing.
Stones would be a great signing, this Baba Rahman sounds half decent so he can be backup but why did we ever sell Bertrand? Crazy! Pedro if Cuadrado leaves will be a shame as Cuadrado hasb’t had the time to bed in yet, and what of Moses – will he get his chance this season?
Someone like Witsel looks pretty certain too which address our midfield issue, but we are forgetting about players who have been great for us in the past, Ramires, Mikel – the coming of Ruben Loftus-Cheek. I don’t think its 100% needed.
So I am not sure what the fuss is about – where can we strengthen?
So far so good do you love the way we operate on the transfer market?
