Just football?
Chelsea seem to be picking up more South American teenagers than a Tijuana school bus.
According to news reports Italian international Ricardo Calafiori has agreed terms with Arsenal in a £42.5 million from Italian side Bologna. Just waiting for Chelsea to sell a couple of Hotels and swoop in to offer him a 10 year contract at 500k a week.
J-Lo got his man…
Palace have just confirmed that Michael Olise is off to Bayern Munich. A real shame but that’s the reality for EPL clubs like us. However, we have made a £40m profit on Olise and we have just signed a Japanese international, Daichi Kamada, on a free who can take Olise’s place
I don’t think it will be long before we get the news that Eze leaving as well
Brighton have signed former Arsenal Academy star Amario Cozier - Dubbery on a four year contract I was actually really surprised that Arsenal let Amario go when his contract ran out at the end of July he is a cracking little winger with enormous potential.
I’ve watched him quite a bit over the past couple of years and was convinced he would eventually be brought into the first team squad permanently after playing in pre season last summer and being named on the bench a few times last season.
Well done Brighton if he had to go then I’m glad it’s to a club with a record of playing their young players.
Reports that the Saudis are looking to poach another star England player, a Mr R Sterling it seems, for a ridiculous sum of money.
Yes please.
I think he was at that stage where he needed first team football, and that’s difficult when you’ve got Saka in front of you !
Quite a few big clubs were sniffing, but sounds like our reputation for playing youngsters (and not standing in their way when a good offer comes in) is what swung it for us
He sounds like a real prospect. Also happy he’s another wide man - as that fits our style of play
Given you’ve got a lot of our back room staff, probably not surprising. The question will be: if you don’t have Tony Bloom’s special algorithm, will they be unpolished diamonds, or ready made superstars?
Won’t find out for a while on a lot of them, the ones being loaned back to the selling club or to Strasbourg for the next 12 months.
Personally I think Chelsea are just following in the footsteps of The Cheats and most of these players may never play for Chelsea or come on sporadically as subs but will be sold on for profit. Look at the list of players that either never appeared or appeared very little at the Etihad but where sold on Douglas Luiz (Aston Villa), Brahim Diaz (Real Madrid), James Trafford (Burnley), Gavin Bazunu (Southampton), Cole Palmer (Chelsea), Romeo Lavia (Chelsea), Angelino (PSV). Pedro Poro, Jack Harrison, Aaron Moody, Carlos Borges, Jadon Sancho the list goes on and on and on.
In 10 years they have sold almost 1/2 a billion pounds worth of players bought into their academy which equates to 50% 0f their total player sales it’s huge business.
I think you’ll find that Citeh have actually being copying our own business model. We thought of it first. So, yah!
They’re carrying on because FFP makes it nigh on impossible for a club with a ground capacity of under 50% of others to easily compete with the bigger boys in the playground. Half the programme sales, half the shop visitors, half the hot dogs etc. Their game related revenue is less than half others from day one. Every match day.
The likes of Fulham not so far away have it even worse.
So the club needed a business model not so reliant on match day attendance numbers. And it worked. And periodically gave us a few players along the way. Simples.
FFP is used by the greedy bar stewards of “The Big Five” to maximise their share of the trough at the expense of the smaller clubs.
They then moan and whinge when one of the upstart “lesser” teams dares to challenge their cozy cartel.
I couldn’t agree more though , they seem to have an air of entitlement .
That makes some of the bygone Arsenal away kits look quite stylish.
Depends on the material, but I quite like that. Trippy
I’m getting a lava lamp vibe, groovy baby