General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

Enzo's gone backwards this season, was excellent after they signed him last season. That club seems to just be poisoning their players these days. Nkunku is looking good since he came in, but let's see if he can lift others up, or be pulled down to their level.

The Chelsea job needs time. At times they have looked really good, against Man City for example. Yes, those occasions are too rare. But they need to leave Pochettino there for at least another year and see what sort of shape he can make at it. Arsenal seem to have dodged a Mudryk shaped bullet and Liverpool seem to have dodged a Caicedo shaped one. Both may well go on to have a solid careers, but at that money? Seems mad at the minute.

Enzo's main issue is, he's a classic No.8, but Chelsea's set up doesn't accommodate for that role currently. They set up in a 4-2-3-1 formation, with him and Caicedo as the base.

I think he would be excellent as 1 of the No.8's within Klopp's Liverpool system.

Mind you, in saying that, he's still no where near £107m pound player!

At this rate?

Was dodgy as fvck at the time - €100 million going to the Eastern Bloc somewhere at a time when there was uncertainty over the Chelsea ownership and where and who was in control of the money there, and add in embargos on doing business with Russia at the time and all that.

Murkiest deal I've seen in a long time.

I have no doubt Caicedo would of been excellent at Liverpool if he had chose us, he's a victim of a scatter gun transfer policy.

Exactly, a hefty chunk of that money went directly into the war against Russia.

He looked class before he moved in fairness - as we saw when he played for Ukraine against Ireland too. His confidence just looks shattered. He's not the first forward to have gone through this sort of change at Chelsea either; Shevchenko, Torres, and Werner all went from pulling up trees elsewhere to looking nervous and unconvincing almost instantly - along with a fair number of this new rash of imports over the past year.

Mad that in his 1 year there he's already had 3 different managers - that can't help a young guy settle in... like, with a move like that you want to be settling into something, whereas there's just been a continuous churn in players and staff with no consistent overriding figure to pull it all together.

The Chelsea project was always doomed. No young player is going to turn down an 8 year contract worth 5m a year. The problem is for every 20 year old Messi or Ronaldo there are plenty of Deli Allis or Jadon Sancho’s. The latter will happily see out their contracts but does anyone think the former will actually shrug their shoulders and say I signed the contract therefore I will give my best years earning a fraction of the going rate? It’s lose lose for the club.

I hate to break it to Chelsea fans but Abramovic was a sports washing project, Boehly somehow thought he was going to make money out of this madness. The only way is down.

I think they could have been awarded 4 penalties last night and I reckon Liverpool would have still easily won. This Chelsea team is bad, their midfield duo barely touched the ball all night, offensively they offered absolutely nothing. Palmer, Gallagher and in particular Sterling were dreadful. And don't get me started on them defensively, Silva looked like a 60 year old man trying to get to grips with Nunez, and Jota was doing as he liked.

Taking a 1-0 lead or whatever and sitting back to try and counter won't work when you are getting beat in every single department. I actually can't think of one Chelsea player that came even close to winning their duel.

Where does this leave Chelsea? Both teams played against each other on the first day of the season in a 1-1 draw. It wasn't a great spectacle as both teams were trying to bed in new players (Liverpool had a complete midfield overhaul) and it was poor enough in quality for large parts. However, Chelsea looked a lot better than Liverpool for most of the game, and in no way would I have thought that there would be 20 points between them after 21 matches.

I don't know where Chelsea goes from here. They could easily finish in the bottom half to be honest, which is crazy to think considering the investment. The teams that will finishing outside the top 5 and most likely ahead of them could be Newcastle, UTD, West Ham and Brighton (I think top 5 will be City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, Villa), leaving them in a battle with Wolves, Fulham and maybe Bournemouth for 10th spot!

Yes, the only players off either team that go to ground easily are those 2 Arsenal players.

While I agree with Jesus being a bit theatrical in the box, Saka gets lumps kicked out of him on a regular basis as is one of the most fouled players.

Sure Jota while admittedly having his foot stepped on kept going and midway through stride just collapsed to make the contact more apparent (no complaints as you cant trust VAR to see things without exaggerating).

But yeah, should be a great game with neither team sitting back and hopefully the game will be decided by football and not refereeing.

Arsenal are the most overrated team in the league. Watch their games and results back. Bar the one hammering they gave Crystal Palace a couple of weeks ago they haven't been comfortable in a game since Sheffield United in October. They have been riding their luck consistently. Will be fighting for 4th place at end of season 15 points behind the league winners

They won 5-0 last week, I'll have whatever you've been smoking.

TNT pre-/post-match is the absolute pits. Turned on before the Man U match to see Rio & Joleon Lescott, last night had that bag of spanners Joe Cole.

Fair enough

Shocker from Kalvin Phillips

That Bournemouth goal is the exact kind of thing that VAR is good for.

That’s so stupid from Casemiro. There are other ways to foul him that don’t leave you on a yellow with 87 mins to play.

Bad timing. Just turned on the match right as Rashford scored.

Hojlund hasn't scored many goals, with most of them ugly, this being probably the ugliest. He'll claim that due to it deflecting off him last as it was going over the line, but it's really an own goal. Off Kilman, off Sa, going in, and then the merest of deflections off Hojlund.

Ah that’s never a penalty

VAR looked for absolutely anything to cancel that penalty for Wolves.

People need to just stop feeding this guy Sligeach. He the biggest wum in this forum.

I think he actually believes he is rational when it comes to United!

Anyway of not seeing the quoted text of people you have set on ignore?.

The fact that he's allowed to continue on with his games because he never quite crosses the line says as much about the forum as it does him