#1036 | Nizaar Kinsella End of Season 23' Update! Lampard, Lewis Hall, Chelsea's Future #CFC

This is Joe Cole. This is Ruben off this cheek and you're listening to the London Blue podcast. Alright, so this fans welcome back to another episode of the London Is Blue podcast. As I was doing this with Brandon, and this time we have a NAS special. That's right, Nisar Kinsula from Evening Standard London Standard. I don't know, it's all the same, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hey, all that matters is it's NAS, the Chelsea reporter extraordinaire. We always have the the Matiniz shows. I'm excited to get that back this summer. Are you thinking you're going to be here state side? Yeah, yeah. I think the whole tour as well. So plenty of time to be together. It'll be beautiful. I'm excited for the Ronald Reynolds exclusive. I'm sure you're working on so. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Yeah, anyways, we're going to be just touching on stuff around the club. Because as you were saying at the beginning, it hasn't been a really fun season for you to watch Chelsea in the stands this season. I guess like go ahead. Let's kick it off there with kind of your summation of the season for you covering it. You've gotten to see some amazing highs. This is definitely the low, low, low of your probably 10 year covering Chelsea, I'd imagine. I know. It's been quite sad really. I must say, I might not take it in the same way as fans, but I kind of do feel like the pain a lot. You're in the stadium and you see Chelsea dropping points, week and week out and bad narratives coming out. And you don't want to sell those stories. You want to tell the good stories as much as you can or at least have a mix of both. But it seems way too much down the negative route. And I think that, yeah, I kind of like, you know, it's kind of much harder job really being a reporter when you're always writing negative news. You want to give people some hope, some happiness. That's what football is about, right? It's about joy and excitement and things like that. So I found that bit challenging and stuff like that. Yeah. So it's been a tough year. And also seeing the boys, you know, I get to see them, especially like, you know, think about your preseason tours. It's quite a slow vibe. You get to see these guys know what they're about, know how hard they work. And stuff just isn't coming together for them. So individually, all these people around Chelsea, I have some respect for, I mean, depends, you know, it doesn't matter if they're working in the sort of hierarchy, the top echelon of the club or kind of like, you know, youth players should push the way in. I have some respect for all these guys. So yeah, I'm looking forward to them turning around, turning narrative a bit more positive. And I'm sure they will. I'm sure everyone will have their day. But this is just a season where Chelsea are punching bags. And unfortunately, you know, I've had to write along those lines and be quite critical. And in his sporting sense, it has been quite poor, unfortunately. I've accepted it. Like, I don't even get riled anymore. You know, maybe a little bit after the World Cup, I still fight in the good fight, Naz, but it, like, this is the point you can't, right? You just have to accept what it is. And the only thing we can do is hope, hope, hope, but it all gets settled in this eight months between all these new hires in the back office, between the next season starting. Because if you learn by making mistakes, you'd imagine we learned a lot this season, Naz. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Chelsea just had unbelievable transition. I've been in businesses that have had takeovers go on and people do get fired. People do get replaced. It feels an employee sometimes like what the hell is going on. And that's a bit of what Chelsea, I think, feels like for some of the players. So yeah, it's kind of normal. You hope that they get to a point where the identity of the new ownership is stamped throughout the club. And it's really a winning one. They want to win the trying to win. They're trying to keep that alive. You know, you look at the transfers and it shows intent, but it's just a team sport. You've got to come together and never, ever also before has the Premier League been more ruthless and difficult as it is this season. I think that Premier League football is the highest level of football. So if you drop off 10%, those brightens are going to come for you and absolutely nail you. Yeah. All the clubs are really well-rodden, really well-financed. Such as you just need to get everything sort of coming together. This is a team sport. It's not even just the squad we're talking. You need top back room. You need everything firing on our cylinders to get this club back up. And of course they need the manager, which is the big topic right now. Come on, get Pachcino in. Let's talk about him. It gives everyone a hope and a push for the future. So we're just waiting for that last bit of news now. And it feels like it's just a case of going announce it, really. Go and get him in the building, get him signed the deal and then announce it. But yeah, it's never done until it's done, unfortunately. One can only hope at this point. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. So if we talk about Pach, to me, it's probably just a timing thing. Is there really anything to gain of announcing it right now? I mean, Lampard, did I really, he publicly turned down the job? Not that he knew he was ever going to get it, but even was kind of like wiping his hands and walking away from this? Obviously not Project, but interim duty that he had. Obviously came out with the quotes about Carney Choco Mecha saying, look, I got to look after my future. It just, it really is all unraveling right at the very end. Like, can we just skip your United on Thursday? Can we just skip Super Sunday and like all going holiday? It's getting bad. I would love to skip it, honestly. It's actually really hard to cover. Really hard. Like the level of football is low. Think everyone wants to move on. There's a few good narratives. I wrote about Lewis Hall playing well. But other than that, yeah. I mean, I was in the press room for the man's city game and it was quiet. There wasn't many journalists there for Chelsea, for Lampard. The players didn't want to speak. They kind of, they got smiles. They're being professional, but they want to go home and get to the end. It feels like, and yeah. Sat in the room with Frank Lampard, I asked him quite a few questions because there was no other journalists, but very few. We had the athletic in their football London, one or two of the other newspapers. And that was about it. And everyone was upstairs watching Pep Guardiola's team, lift the trophy, watching the celebrations and all that. So it felt very strange. I've rarely been covering Chelsea where it felt like a bit of a sideshow, but hey, you've got to use this as fuel, right? To push. And yeah, with the Lampard thing, he was kind of asking the press conference if he would work as a sort of sidekick for the new manager. The next manager, and he said, no, he probably wouldn't be welcome. And the other thing is he wants to be a head coach. That's his whole thing. So yeah, I think that that was an item. I think people have got quite upset about his kind of trouble maker courts, haven't they, where he's... They have. I mean, he's sort of saying, you know, he's our player. We've got a right to use him. And I want to clarify something that showed this pod. This is actually Chelsea's right, like, you know, legally in the football legislation. They are allowed to keep players if they want outside international windows. So yes, maybe it would have been better for Cany to go and play a few more minutes for England under 20s. But yeah, I think that it's Chelsea's right to keep him and Lampard's in a position to do so. So yeah, I think also part of the problem, I think that some of the sort of Twitter conversations quite accurate on it, I think Lampard's the sort of surprise people. He's made sort of short-term decisions as an interim to try and benefit himself to kind of look good. He's not this kind of coach that he was before, bringing the youth through, giving them quick chances and stuff like that. But I think he's trying to win over a big team, be it man United or Newcastle, just to maybe enhance his reputation. So understandably, in the circumstances, you probably are going to be a little bit selfish and it doesn't matter if you're a club legend or some do you have no connection to Chelsea, you've got to take your chance. Football is very few chances at this level. So I think that what he's trying to do is I'll keep Cany. He might be important in a game off the bench and fans are frustrated because he could be started for England, right? And getting better development maybe. So yeah, it's a tricky one. If you had a long-term manager in, you could maybe make long-term decisions, but they have a short-term manager in who's making, guess what, short-term decisions? 100%. That's what I was talking about in our group chat as well. If anyone wants to be mad, they need to be mad at the leadership of the club. Like we're in this situation because the decisions they've made. I think Lamps probably, once we're on Madrid, was over and he just saw how broken the situation is. I'm sure that's when he realized it doesn't matter what I do. I can't build anything in seven games, whatever it is. It just is what it is. I need to keep my reputation intact and we have seen that. And remember, everyone was like, why is Zee-ish playing? I'm like, Lampard was key in signing Zee-ish. He likes Zee-ish and like it's not really a surprise. Pulisic has seen five minutes plus stoppage time this entire run. Maybe he hasn't been fit. We don't really know. You know, Benoit about his shield hadn't really played, but now we find out he's got an injury. Thanks to you, Naz, which we'll touch on a little bit, but I get it. And if people are upset that short-term decisions are being made, look at the situation we're in. There's no one there to govern it any different. Who was the longtime assistant Steve, who's in England, Holland, to be there to create that continuity that it doesn't exist. We'll have to wait and see. We're going to take our first ad break and we get back more on Lewis Hall and how Naz has seen him go. And then why we're going to miss Betty's shield for a lot longer than we thought. Thanks to Sponsors, we'll be right back. Bet you didn't see this coming. I hope you're ready to hear editor Jake's voice for a while in the ads. 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No, but like, if this is his secondary position in the Premier League, like, wow, that is so impressive. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you forget how young he is as well. 18, man. Like it's a wonder kid's state is this 18. Most of the Dev Squad, right? They're like 1920, 21 at that age, and he's just out of high school or primary and playing with grown men at the top end of the Premier League table. Exactly. This is when he made his debut Chelsea, he was still playing cricket with his mates. Like he, you know, professional footballs out of lads played two sports, but he was so young that he had a cricket team as well, then he's brilliant and cricket apparently. He can do everything at cricket, which is kind of similar to how he is at football. He's kind of this all rounder who's pretty technically sound, like physically strong as well. My one concern is maybe his engine. He needs to get that up a little bit for wingback and Frank Lampard was saying, and this was some of the questions I was asking him about, Lewis Hall, that he needs to be more vocal. He's not got that kind of like leadership presence on the pitch yet. He's quite an introvert introvert character. So I think that that needs to come on as well, but you can learn those two things, the engine and the talking side of things. There's many introverts that world class players. So, yeah, I think that he's been a really good positive outcome from this season, not looked at a place in the nine games. I mean, he's looked better than a lot of the senior players, a lot of the new signings, people like that. And I think sometimes when it's an academy player, we almost expect too much or we think, oh, we can just send him out alone and forget about him. And maybe in two years it would be even better. But you've got to say that he's kind of like, it was a single swim to play against Man City. And he's sort of swam, really. He's obviously not the best player on a pitch, but he played against Rian Maris, who I think is a real world class winger. So he absolutely did brilliantly against Maris. There was one bit where Maris tried to skin him and he made it a really well-timed slide in tackle. And it was like, oh, nothing's tackle. He timed it to perfection. He created the best chance of the game. Most touches in the opposition box. Most chances created two great shots. One of them took a really good save from our taker. He's a really good shot stop of the city backup goalie. So, yeah, I think he's a really good player. And he played nine games in Chelsea this season. He was in the team sort of in the winter period during the injury crisis. And he played against Man City in all three games. Of course, Chelsea lost them, but he played well in those games. He outperformed Rico Lewis, who is considered a top prospect in England and four-man city in those games that he played. He played against Newcastle, played away at Newcastle, away at Fulham, away at Liverpool. This man only takes on the hard challenges. He's not exactly playing the easy game. He's not playing, you know, born with a home or something like that. This guy is getting trapped in a deep end. And again, Man City away when they're winning the title. So, yeah, he looks really good. I'd be really excited about him. And I hope and Chelsea needs to be careful because they've already got a big squad. I hope they give him space to thrive. And the ad's got a bit of that, like there's two left backs ahead of him at the minute. There's also a max and he's a great prospect. So, how's that going to work? You've got maybe signing a new central midfielder as well. So, that knocks him down the pecking order. Like, if Chelsea care about him and think he's good enough, I think he's good enough, but they think he's good enough. They have to give him a little bit of space and Pochtino's a kind of manager who likes home grown. I'm learning a lot about that recently. He really likes your home grown guys. What's English guys part of this team? So, there needs to be a little bit of space, believe it's all or people like him to come through. And he's the only breakthrough academy player really this season. So, it's even more important that he gets a glimmer of hope in this first team. Well, and maybe you can expand on that because, like, again, Chelsea fans are going to say, yeah, he's been in the academy. He loves the club. Like, he wants to make a name for himself. We even saw the man city on Sunday. They put in Rico Lewis, right? They put in a bunch of players with 80s in their numbers, you know, guys that aren't seeing a lot of minutes. But Pat was like, go out and prove to me that you should be in the Premier League and my team. And they did that same thing here. Lewis Hall is like, wow, what an amazing opportunity. I can either show Chelsea I'm good enough or show other Premier League teams that I'm good enough. But then on the pre match presser, Lampard says only some players are showing commitment to Chelsea. This was your article from Friday. Is there more context to that? Or like, how are you interpreting Lampard's words and that? Because I think as fans, we definitely were like, like, obviously, I also empathize with the players. I feel like the club has put them through an extreme amount of adversity this season as well. So like, I tend to balance it out. But is there like, I guess, how do you connect the dots between the two, maybe with Lampard's pre match presser? Yeah, I think that Lampard's been quite cautious about giving young players minutes. But at the same time, he's kind of complaining that players aren't showing up passion or aggression. And you kind of say that's probably more the older players who are frustrated with the situation, maybe have options to move abroad or to know the clubs or whatever that he's kind of speaking about like that. And I think that maybe these players can be in that sort of answer to the problem that he spoke about pre match that some of his players, he wouldn't name names, but some of his players, he's not as happy with their commitment, the way they're playing the effort they're showing. Of course, Chelsea don't have a lot to play for late in the season, but I think fans just want to see players showing passion and making tackles, like the Arsenal game, the Arsenal first half for me, that was one of the most unforgivable moments of football I've seen and a lot of the punditry around it was correct, just to not make tackles is just unbelievable to me. It's fundamental. It's fundamental. And for the three goals, I remember only Nani Madawakay, who hadn't even gotten near the team at that point, only he made a tackle to try and stop any of the goals. And I'm like, got all these try and make a tackle, and Nani's tackle was poor, but he's not a defensive player, so it would be. But it was just like God, at least he tried. So it's those kind of moments, I think Lampard is talking about, where you're talking absolute basics. Like, if you don't do that amateur football, you'll get screened by your captain. So yeah, I think that if you have youth players, they'll automatically do that because they're trying to prove a point. And it's difficult, I think, to some of the stars who are now battling in mid-table with nothing to play for to do those things because they expect better and they're really frustrated. But they've got to do it because Chelsea fans are paying their money. They expect a lot. They want something to be proud of, at least on a 90-minute basis, just to hang on to for next season. So I think that, yeah, maybe Lampard could have been brave with some of his lineups and just been like, look, you're not putting your foot, you're out, then you get the loose holes in. Maybe even more guys down the academy, I'm sure Phil would want a lot more of those guys too. So yeah, I think you're always going to guarantee it with those kind of players. Yeah, I mean, we've seen it with Connor. Lampard's loved Connor. And I bet if he had Mason, Mason would be playing as well, but long-term fitness there, maybe some contract issues. But those are the types of players who are stepping up and in an adverse time of the season. To your point, a lot of these established pros looking ahead to the summer, they want to go in healthy. No one wants to go in with an unnecessary knock. Kova's probably just sitting around trying to get healthy right now, which to be fair to him, long-term of the club is more important. These games don't matter. I think, yeah, as fans, we would have liked to see a little bit more rotation. Some of the names that continue to get trotted out and you're kind of like some moans and groans a little bit. I don't know what we'll have to see with two games left, but excited to see Lewis Hall and some of the others step up and shine in these opportunities. And to be fair, there have been some key players that have shown up and continue to work hard. That ends O'Ranis socks off yesterday, even though there wasn't much going on. Yeah, yeah. I think Enzo has been probably a slight bright spot really in the season. And he looks like he can do it. I think everyone sort of convinced by him out there. And he can do all different types of jobs, which is great. Lampad picked out Reuben, who I didn't think thought to think played that well yesterday, but he did put himself about a bit. So I think it was an uptick, but we don't want to get carried away by these sort of small improvements. And we don't know how do you measure yourself, gets man city second string. You don't really know, but Lewis Hall definitely looks decent. So I think that's the only thing I could have written about from the match was, it looks good. It looks good, man. And then that's the problem. All right. It's been a season of inconsistency. You get bright spots, even the Reuben, we've seen some great performances. We've seen some performances to forget. Part of that is the inconsistency. Trevos come in and I'm like, man, he looks so good at right back to your point. Lampad now puts him at left to center back. We're like, okay. And like, what does that mean for these players? Like they're just getting chopped and changed and moved all over. We're playing it back for a couple weeks and we play it back three, then back to back four, like watch United, probably go back to back four, even though I think aren't you guys playing back three most of the time? No, I think back to back four. So he's going to line up and try to match. I'm predicting it now, right? Like more changes for United on Thursday. I know. No, no, no, no teams made more changes than Chelsea in that sort of way. So, and a lot of them are in force that, you know, we've, we talk a bit about the medical in a minute and a lot of the so many injuries. And actually, I was looking at the injury table before the match and Chelsea were already top and then Jalfi Lick's pulls out of the warm up. So, you've got, it's just like constant, like it is, it is kind of hard. It just is sort of symptomatic of a clubbing chaos. Lampard's trying to find some sort of formula. He's not found it. He's not going to find it. We know he's not going to find it. We might as well forget about it now. It doesn't matter what formation he plays, but it just feels like it's not working. I think even, and I actually skipped a few games, Bornwith and Nottingham Forest, but I've watched the extended highlights of both and, and yeah, you look at those games and you feel like the forest draws a decent result, but it's not, it's not. And the, Bornwith one was, they had a their chance as well. So, it was like, they had their chances just before Chelsea scored. So it's like, man, you just, everything's a lottery right now. It's like the best Chelsea could do is hope to get a lucky win, maybe fight. The character of the team is becoming a fighting mid-table team. There's no quality or teamwork in there. And that's what Pochatino needs to bring and what he does. And, and you know, you look at Guardiola and you have to be envious, but Pochatino attacks in a similar way to Guardiola. So those auto-matisms that they call it in football, the slightly wanky word that, that technical people in football use, they sort of automatic movements, the passes, the triangles, things that make Man City good to watch, especially in that Champions League match against Real Madrid. Pochatino brings that and that's what Chelsea absolutely don't have. Lampard is just putting guys on the pitch, picking an 11 and hoping somebody brings a moment of magic. I mean, we were just hoping Stealing scored on the countereth cycle, or maybe Luis Hall got a good crossing that would work on the day. And it was like, you're just hoping for a moment of magic from a player, but football's changed. You don't do that anymore. You need these more sophisticated models that Pochatino will bring and hopefully, and I think the only way is up, but hopefully it'll make a big difference. Again, Luis Hall is not used to playing down the flank in whipping and crosses. He's used to being in the middle and hitting bangers from the top of the box. All right, go check out Phil and I's Dev Squad and you 18s on the column crew, where we're gonna take a last break and we get back and talk a little medical injury stuff with, no, so think of the sponsors and bear it back. Are you missing out on your favorite shows because it's not available in your region? Trying to keep your private time private? Well, let me introduce you to Nord VPN. If you board up the US Netflix, why not just take it for a spin in the UK using Nord VPN and a clickable button. You can do just that. No need to travel to Japan for your favorite anime when Nord VPN brings up right to you with 5000 plus servers. No show is out of your reach using my link, Nord VPN dot com four slash London is blue. You can receive a huge discount on a two year plan with one month free. We all love the binge, but privacy is a big deal to Nord VPN keeps your information encrypted. 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And so they think they might need surgery, but we're not 100 percent sure yet. But yeah, the groin injuries were unexpected. So he'll miss preseason, probably missed the start of the season. It's a massive shame. But I think that maybe, you know, it'll be able to handle it. Probably I missed a couple of games maybe and another Chelsea have a lot of defenders. So hopefully somebody else can step in and fill in before he gets back. So what's up with the medical department? I've heard a lot of chopping and changing had an interim person who kind of worked with some professional athletes on the side. Then they brought the person back in who they had sacked. What's your understanding of the medical department? It seems like it's it's a huge Achilles heel of this team because it has been inconsistent all season with who's there. And I think we've seen more players working personal trainers than ever before at Chelsea. And maybe that's just social media and things like that. But clearly it's you were talking about the the injury table and things like that. Like we all know it's been a big concern. Well, you know, we had the run in the mid 2000s, right? Where Chelsea would go seasons without a soft muscle injury. And here we are. It seems like we have a new one every week. Yeah, I think it's been a huge concern this season. I think the owners have tried to change every department really in the whole club, but the medical department, they lost or they sort of sacked the two most senior guys, the doctor and the head physio. And they've sort of not really replaced them yet. They've got like sort of consultancy for me and who is sort of doing that. They have got some staffing, some consultancy and some guys from rugby, English rugby and things like that come into to fill their place. But just the staff turnover has been been huge. And I don't think that it's really settled in yet. The department is not firing on our cylinders. So I think that there's some concern about that behind the scenes. And you look at the numbers and it sort of bears out as well. Just a sheer number of injuries and the worst ones are the ones where like, yeah, you can get injured in training a bad tackle. You can get injured. But like you said, the muscle injuries are a concern because they seem to be preventable. Clubs like Man City are playing more matches in Chelsea. And they've got everyone fit, except Nathan, okay? Chelsea have got people falling over left and center. The other issue is sort of the re the the re-injuries that we've seen. We've seen Reese James come back and get injured. And that's that cost you actual points when a player of that caliber comes back after a two month injury layoff and gets injured in his first match back, that cost you points. Wesley Fafana had the same as well. I think Reese James's personal trainer came out and complained, sort of did a cryptic post that we this is your honor of content we have now. Somebody does cryptic post, which sort of was criticizing Chelsea's return to play protocol. So those are kind of concerns. And then now I've got bad issue lay added to the list, quite a bad injury. We don't know really if that's anything to do the medical department. It would be just speculation, but the sheer numbers are a cause for concern. So overall, yeah, I think it's an area you know, Pochettino said, sorry, and Potter said that, you know, he admits that things aren't quite right and that that needs to be looked at. You need to improve on that those records and and yeah, Chelsea are going to try and improve on that and they need to because you can't imagine how many points this has cost Chelsea the season. It's really will be concrete and it's a huge factor. And when the players come back from injury as well, they're tactically not available. They're tactically not in tune with the team. They need time to get match fit as well. So that just disrupts the whole thing and it's been part it's been a huge part actually, I think of the picture of Chelsea's failed season is this injury crisis, this constant constant injury crisis. So I think Chelsea needs to get on top of it really. And and yeah, when Lampard saying that you can't compete with Brighton because they're physically dominating you on a pitch overnight minutes, it's not good enough is it? So need to get that sorted. It's urgent really. Well, again, I would just say a lot more information on NASA's article about Benoit on the on the website. So go check it out there. Kind of what you said, you go in more depth because I got a I got asked now, summer's coming July 1st transfer window. It's going to be open. A lot of us fans are a lot more worried about who's leaving than coming in. You know, I feel like overall, I've got a pretty good squad. I think Chelsea with, you know, the right buy in the right manager, some things like that. I think there's a couple key areas, no doubt that we need to fix got to figure out what's going on with the goalkeepers. I think figuring out what's going to go up top as a striker needs to happen. But like, how are you sensing this summer is going to is going to stack up any concrete departures, any concrete links of things coming in. If I see Vlawvich for 80 million euros, I'm going to lose my absolute mind. I'm hoping that's just all too soon to really be concrete. But, you know, there's a little bit of smoke out there about Chelsea looking to sign players in the transfer window, which is crazy to me. We have the most bloated squad ever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think it's going to be way more about sales. Everyone I've spoken to, you know, close to club in the club, whatever it's just saying, it's about sales, especially initially. And there's kind of like a little bit of a soft deadline of June the 30th as well to get players out. Chelsea needs to pick the right ones. I think you kind of raised concerns that if Chelsea sell the wrong ones, you could be regretful and Chelsea just played against Man City, who have de Bruyne, who I think is widely regarded as a Chelsea regret for obvious reasons that he's world-class. So, you know, selling him was maybe a mistake. So, it's trying not to do that, right? It's trying to get the right ones out as best you can. I think Chelsea's kind of plan is the older guys who have got less time on their contract. They're pretty much going to go. I mean, you look at somebody like Matty O'Koveczyk, she's one of the captains, don't forget Chelsea, but Chelsea barely made any efforts at all to renew his contracts and he's got one year left. So, it kind of shows you that, and it's not no slight on Koveczyk, I'm sure everyone, everyone Chelsea actually loves Koveczyk, so he's a great pro. I know he's not playing well, but a great pro, potentially great. He's got great, you know, Man City are interested in him, so he shows you he's a good player, right? But it's just a sort of a mission that certain players need to go. And then the good thing about selling players as well, and it might seem a bit bittersweet because you got a love coverage, you scored some great goals, had some great moments, won some trophies to Chelsea, but you've got to create space for the other ones to grow, right? We talked about Hall earlier, that's how you create spaces, sort of slimming down that squad and making rooms. So, it's about picking those guys. It's going to be like ZH has one year left in his deal, they'll try and sell him. But in the January window, they had a chance to loan into PSG, and they ran out of time. So, I think the difference is now, is that Chelsea are actually going to put in time an effort to properly get these players out. People like Aubameyang might leave for free, they might try and get fees in for ZH, you know, clubs might try and get them for cheap off Chelsea, you know, we know Loftus Chikas, major interest from AC Milan, AC Milan are not likely to pay a big fee for Loftus Chik, but it will all be profit on the account. So, these are the kind of options Chelsea have. And you kind of have two options as well, in that you can sell to a rival and make more money, or you know, Premier League rival, or you can sort of sell them abroad and make less money, but at least they're not playing against you every week, or you might not be as embarrassed if they do well. So, there's kind of those two considerations as well, is like who do you sell them to? That's the big thing that Chelsea are going to have. I mean, I remember Conne Gallagher had a bid from Newcastle on deadline day in January, and Chelsea didn't accept it or didn't even reply to the bid because they didn't want him to go to a European rival. Chelsea were competing for Europe at that point, and they were ready to let Gallagher go to Everton, but not to Newcastle. So, it kind of shows you what Chelsea are going to be like a bit this summer, and also then you've got Pochettino throwing into the mix who I'm sold, he actually likes Gallagher. So, Chelsea might be ready to sell Gallagher, but his Pochettino going to negotiate to keep him. There's all these moving parts. It's going to be fascinating. Without a doubt, we'll definitely have to see, obviously, I'm going to ask about the goalkeepers. Kepa can tell me how great of a season he's had personally, but I still watching Man City's back up making me go wow. I almost, I think we'd take him right now, and it just goes to prove that there's levels to the game, you know, and this season I'm happy for him, but not for the team. So, Mendy seems to not be interested in signing his contract extension. Do you feel like one of those two will be gone this summer, or they're still going to have to write it out and continue to try to figure out what to do next season? Yeah, I think it's way more likely that Mendy leaves than Kepa, just because I think Mendy love like way more offers is because his wages are a lot more accessible. So, overseas clubs can afford him. I don't think any club will pay Kepa what Chelsea paying him, and that's the problem. And it's always been the problem. Chelsea tried selling almost every transfer window except in the last year, pretty much. So, yeah, it's kind of like he's seen as like inaccessible. Like the only clubs that can buy Kepa, probably like the five richest in England, Real Madrid and PSG. I think that's it, like on wages. So, and they're not going to give him that sort of role. None of those clubs will make him number one, but I think Mendy will get those offers. So, yeah, I think Mendy will be so Chelsea will have two strong goalkeepers next season competing. And I think that'll be the way they go. So, yeah, I think they would be happy to sell Kepa. I know that some people have written that, but I just don't think it's realistic. So, I haven't really written about that subject. So, yeah, I think Mendy is getting big interest already. And Chelsea don't want to make him. I don't think Chelsea want to build the goalkeeping role around Mendy, you know, not played. I think Chelsea feel ready to let him go. And I think Mendy is also sort of ready to go. So, yeah, I think it's kind of just a natural development. It's not no one's got any beef with anyone else. It's just sort of what's happened. All right. Home run time, NaaS, for you, or whatever they call it when they hit it out and Kirkett. Mason. Yeah, I think Mason, what everyone wants him to stay, right? But you've got to get the deal done. The only thing that might help is Pochettino, but it's not looking too good right now. But it really would take like Pochettino making a big effort. The owner's making a big effort, giving him kind of what he wants to an extent. Do we know what he's asking for? What the impasses? There's loads of aspects to it. Like financially, you look at Reese James, probably a benchmark, £250,000 a week. Mount's two-time player of the year, so he's probably got some claim to that. Some fans disagree. He's the most polarizing player going. But there's an argument for that, right? And then certainly there's loads of other things. Mount's always in commercial adverts for Chelsea. You're making money for Chelsea. They use him all the time because the old contracts under a brand of it, you could do unlimited commercial. But now, Mason, I guess he wants to control his image rights a bit and sort of get hold of that. So a lot of players, a lot of the new players like Enzo has sort of options to do that as well. So those are the negotiations, loads of sticking points and length of contracts as well. So there's many, many aspects to it. And don't forget also all the players are getting a 30% pay cut because they're not in Europe this season or many players. So that's another factor. Where does he rank in sort of non-qualification for Europe? So there's loads of those little clauses that need sort in and it's just not gone well in the negotiations so far. And it's about relationships, right? They're not going very well at a minute. All right. Scale out of one to 10. 10. Mason's gone. Absolutely. Never see you again. One, he's absolutely staying. Where do you kind of land on the scale right now? As of today, caveat as of Monday, the 22nd of May and the early hours in the US. I think six, but also there's a third option where he stays, but he doesn't renew. And I think nobody's written about that. And I've tried to write about that in my pieces. And there is a third option, which is kind of an irritating option. But also it's an option that Pochtino I think would be comfortable with. He'd fight until the final minute, I think, to try and keep Mason. So don't discount the third option. But that's such a financial risk. All right. I totally understand that. And as you're the man, way to be on top of all this, we'll have to get you back on continue to do it. I'm super excited to see in a couple months as well. State side will make sure to take care of you as always. But yeah, keep up the good fight. Check it out. Now as links in the description, a ton of stuff over at the standard sport. Go check it out. As articles are for free. Just need a little login account. But anyways, now as keep it up, we'll see you know in the WhatsApp for your man United Chelsea, the London is blue, Nas Darby on Thursday. Yeah, we're nearly there as well. So let's get over the line. Awesome. All right. We'll have a good one. Everybody. Shell spans more content by natcha. So until next time you get the blue flag flying high.