Chelsea: Six ready-to-go phrases so you can own every transfer debate

Chelsea have a full week between games, which means transfer rumours will be spun in more directions than usual. Don’t fall behind the chatter – use these simple phrases to stand out in any conversation!

No one knows who Chelsea will sign, but everyone has an opinion over who they should, with many of those opinions fully based on Football Manager. These are some great ways to ensure everyone of no consequence flocks to your side in any rigourously informed debate.

1. “He’s really more of a system player”

Do you really like a player, but your friends and Twitter followers keep pointing out his alternate acts of banality and blatant errors?

Well, that’s not his fault. He’s really more of a system player. If he was in the right role (see #3 below) under the right manager in the right league, and everything else is perfectly scripted for his unique habits and foibles, baby, he’ll be in your FIFA TOTY FUT 4LIFE.*

2. Express concern over the physicality of the Premier League

Many players, particularly strikers, have Chelsea as the low point in their career. They came in highly regarded, did little of consequence at Stamford Bridge and then rejuvenated their career elsewhere.

A lot of things factor in to that: managers, style of play, their age and place in their development and career. But those things are very difficult to assess when talking about a transfer target. Better to play it safe and wonder if the player everyone is talking about can handle the physicality of the Premier League. There are many things about Serie A or La Liga or the Bundesliga that may or may transfer to Premier League success, but set those aside. Can he handle the physicality of the Premier League? I mean, Diego Costa and Alvaro Morata, amirite?

3. “He’s an ABC, when Chelsea really need an XYZ”

The 2018/19 season started with a months-long Twit-torial (that’s a Twitter tutorial) on registas. Registas were explained with a lot of arrow-laden diagrams, exciting YouTube clips and – most convincingly of all – condescending tweets questioning one’s education, Twitter verification status or mental capacity.

That set the standard for the new way of speaking about players. In many ways, it’s also the old way of speaking about players, as rigidly defined role descriptions were once much more useful than in today’s more fluid, all-around game. But now there are as many roles as their are zones in Gregg Berhalter’s bastardized conception of Pep-ball.

So make sure people know that they are pining for a new trequartista when Chelsea actually need a raumdeuter. Wait, they have a raumdeuter to go with their regista? Well then Marina Granovskaia better scour the continent for a controller pivot, or else the Blues will lose all tactical control of their halfspaces.

4. Refer to the underlying stats

It takes 90 minutes to watch a football game. That’s a lot of time, and you’re a busy guy scouting all of your transfer targets and making videos about them. You simply can’t watch enough games in a week to pull from a large enough pool of players to sift out a few worth studying more deeply and then making a well-considered assessment on which one or two Chelsea should by.

But you still need to back up your argument, and you demand more from yourself than noting a player’s goals and assists. Well, then, simply mention the underlying stats.

Don’t worry, you don’t even need to know what those stats are. All you need to know is that there are underlying stats, and they support the contrary opinion that you hold. That’s the great thing about them: they always reveal a more complete story to spreadsheet sacerdotes like yourself. So what if a player is making a tangible impact on the game (or not). The underlying stats tell you that any minute now he is going to rocket / flop. Especially if he is in the right system!

How do you know this? Because the stats are underlying, unlike those lying stats on the top line.

5. “I’m afraid / hopeful he could be another….”

You don’t need to look too far to cite a Chelsea flub in the transfer market. While the incoming transfers get all the attention, every once in a while an outbound reaches the banter hall of fame. How did the club not recognize the latent talent of Kevin de Bruyne and Mohamed Salah? Were they not looking at the underlying stats?

But anyone can toss around household names like Alexander Pato, Radamel Falcao, Alvaro Morata, de Bruyne or Salah. If you want to really impress with your comparisons, you have to dig deep.

Yes, Ben Chilwell is doing exceptionally well at Leicester City, but if Chelsea buy him, what if he ends up being the next Alessandro Orlando? Imagine if the Blues buy Timo Werner and he turns out to be this generation’s Uwe Wassmer?

Well, at least no one can say you didn’t warn us.

6. Verify he has “an elite mentality”

The Premier League is a challenge to players’ bodies, but Chelsea FC is a challenge to players’ minds. Some men, who have spent their life in some of the most competitive environments on Earth, starting at ages before they could even enlist in their country’s military, in order to join the statistically impossible ranks of professional footballers, have crumbled in front of the Shed End.

They can score goals, make tackles, win headers and lift trophies across Europe and South America. But do they really have the elite mentality necessary for success at Stamford Bridge?

Technical abilities, physical capacity, tactical variety… that’s all readily verifiable. But does he have the elite mentality?

He seems to have a decent personality on social media, but that doesn’t say anything about an elite mentality?

Some leagues in Europe, even if he’s played in the Champions League, permit subelite mentalities, and that’ll be a recipe for disaster. So before Chelsea sign him, put on your Barbara Streisand in The Prince of Tides a**-masking therapist pantsuit and, from the comfort of your mum’s basement, pass judgment on whether or not he has an elite mentality.

*H/T to my colleague Scott Brant for being just young enough to know what that means, and just old enough to teach me.