Should the loan signing of a young Chelsea centre half not be seen as an attempt to reinforce our squad numbers, which Roy was bemoaning yesterday on SKY, rather than a prelude to someone leaving ??

Are you referring to Chalobah, Swindy?

I wouldn't think so but the German lad, plus the odd other link with centre backs has had plenty thinking. I can't remember the names right now - had a day off and a few drinks.

Red and Blue Army!

I would agree but it appears we have very little money to spend and hence why we can't really be proactive. Rumours about interest in loads of our players Andersen, Guehi, Doucouré, Olise, even Mateta...but all have come to nothing giving us nothing to spend and a seemingly unsettled squad.

I don’t think I agree with our transfer plans being totally reactive.

Remember all the pundits and reporters talking about how much trouble we were in when we had 13 players out of contract. It was basically a case of everyone saying without those players, we are done for. Roll on the summer. We kept the ones we wanted, and replaced the ones we didn’t, with younger more promising players. That whole summer transfer window had been planned for…and we have done well out of it.

So why do we keep running the club down like they can’t plan signings? It’s ludicrous to suggest the club don’t have a list of players they watch. Almost every club in the world has a list of players they want…lower down the leagues, if it’s not the club it’s the manager.

Those players are likely on a lot of others clubs lists as well…so it’s never as simple as it seems.

I think the idea is that the ideal your average fan has, in terms of a transfer window, will always be beyond the reality for the club and therefore present as insufficient with the suggestion of a ‘reactive’ policy suiting the bill so far as an explanation. Anything but 5-6 quality players, for both the first team and squad, signed in the first fortnight might qualify as such.

To a certain extent, you might ask, within an environment where you have players playing games with contracts, injuries, other clubs turning your players heads or stealing them altogether and an unknown in terms of clubs/players reactions to approaches, to what extent you have to be ‘reactive’ with an ever changing status quo?

My imagining is that there is a skeletal, framework of a ‘plan’ but this is plagued with unknowns and risks. Add to that our tried and tested ‘waiting game’ where again Im guessing we try to increase the pressure on a selling club to negotiate quickly and probably to our advantage to save every penny possible. That all makes things look as though we don’t realise the window is open until the last week!

That said, we’ve needed a RB and a Striker for donkey’s and that’s still not sorted… so… boo!

Edited by Nicholas91 (09 Aug 2023 1.01am)

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!