Because times change.

The level of players we are looking for has changed.

Because football has changed.

Because our business model has changed.

Because the level of investment we have access to has changed.

Its really nothing to be confused about.

Pretty basic stuff really

Scouting for good players for good prices is the same as it's always been!
Leicester are showing that!

What have they won?

Yes playing very well at the moment and give them all the credit in the world but they are in a very different situation then us.

There is no point in having Roman and the investment he brings if we don't use it. We might as well stayed a cup yo-yo side and one of those teams that do ok but never really do anything league wise.

"good prices" are not the same for us as they are for clubs like Leicester.

Do really think Leicester will go on and become a force in the league?

What they are doing is amazing but lets be honest more then likely be back to normal next season. Even with Champion's League football they will only attract players of a certain level.

What we need to remember is for example Lamps at the time was not this amazing deal.

It was an awful lot of money to us and for a player who was pretty decent but nothing more. Most Chelsea fan's was looking at the deal as one of those mmmmmm ok then and many West Ham fans was more then pleased.

Joey Cole refused to sign a contract with West Ham so was easy to get on a good deal.

Gallas was very expensive at the time and very much a "gamble".

Its very easy to use hindsight when talking about deals and talking about "values" in 2001 to 2015 etc but again when looking at the bigger picture and Chelsea then and Chelsea now. You are talking about two very different clubs in two very different times.

Frank Lampard - £12m
Joe Cole - £6m
William Gallas - £6m
Petr Cech - £10m

These were hardly unknown freebies! The summer you signed Joe Cole you spent £120m - absolutely unheard of money at the time and you wasted an incredible amount on players who simply didn't really work out. Its hardly fair to pick on those that did and cite it as some sort of long forgotten transfer policy. Its also easy in retrospect to say that players were a bargain based on level of service given but at the time they were chunky money.

Sorry Don I hadn't read your post when I posted!! Making the same points on the whole.

if i recall correctly? Gallas cost us 6 million which was an absolute bargin!
Lamps price was very good for a player of his age with obvious potential.
Even Robben only cost us 12 million and that was around the time UTD were paying 30 million for Rio. Makalele was a steal at 18 million!
We have not been buying players and getting the massive value for money the way we once did! I don't see how you can argue against that.

Jose is gone and its still moan, moan, moan. Are you ever happy ?

At the time Lamps was considered overpriced and had an awful start at Chelsea.
Ranieri got him playing and Jose turned him into a star player.

We spent lot that year because we had money to burn. But, the facts and figures show that the core of the team that took us to second place in the league did not cost all that much. We also had champions league money to use as well, lets not forget.
Villa blew over 300 million and didn't even get into the CL. At least the money we spent moved us on.

I remember when we signed Lamp's. In those days when we had no money and although I thought he was a decent player and considering we bought two players from Barca for around 7m each it was a massive investment at the time. Now if we had got Joey Cole I would have been happy (that came after when we was in a totally different situation and price was mainly down to that and him not signing a new deal otherwise the price would have more then likely been much higher).

Even going as far back as Carlo from memory we signed him from pretty much a lower league club and I think it was more of a deal as the club did not want him any more. I would be pretty certain of saying it was prob more down to someone saying to the manager of the time to look at him then some major scouting find.

Comparing those days to now is just insane. Utterly pointless

Believe it or not, I am nearly always happy and content with my lot.
Jose or no Jose, if i think we are making a mistake i will say so.
We have a rather thin and average squad for the money spent on it. Are you happy with this? We can and should have better than what we've got!

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Because you are talking about two very different time and two very different clubs.

Its like saying "oh the films in the 60s cost less to produce today, Why is that?"

Comparing is just insane

We started spending lots of money when Harding came on board, long before Roman arrived!
Redeveloped the stadium.
Buying French World Cup winning players.
Gullit, Vialli and Zola, and i bet they weren't being payed peanuts.

Nothing like reinventing history.

He was a decent player and no more. Considering we paid 7m for a two time league winner and a world cup winner etc it was not this amazing wonderful deal, In hindsight it was a amazing one but at the time it was one that was more likely going to go badly then well more so considering our financial state at the time (it was not long after we was thinking of letting him go on a free as we could not afford him)

If you look at our transfer dealings around that time, Spending 11m on "potential" was very much against the policy at the time. He was only only between Chris Sutton who was one of the leagues top goal scorers and a title winner and JFH who had been a great scorer for Leeds and even in poor Athletico was not far short of being the leagues top scorer.

Potential was not where our money was going during those years

And we almost went out of business doing so.

We was doing nothing more then a Leeds

We were nothing like Leeds! They stupidly put all their eggs into one basket when they didn't need to We had no choice really..

We had some very difficult choices to make.
1 - We either stayed as were as a yo yo club who hadn't won a sausage for 20 years and without a pot to pee in, playing in a slum, less than half full stadium and with a horrible/nasty reputation for racism and violence. A club doing no more than just existing and trying to stay at the Bridge.
2 - We got someone on board who would start spending money as a part of the long term plan that Bates promised would take us to the top. Yes, it was a gamble but we were so far behind the top clubs it was one worth taking, otherwise our situation could have gone on for decades, or even worse, see us closed down.
We earned our luck with Roman!!!!!

Maybe but the outcome could have gone the same route as Leeds, Why and how we did it might have been different in some ways but the outcome might have not been that much different

But what is not in question is that we was this "club" buying potential and doing wonderful deals and amazing scouting because we was not. Its nothing more then rewriting history to bash the current framework in which we buy players for no other reason then you don't like it

I would put the deals of

Hazzard
Thibaut Courtois
David Luiz
Oscar

Against any previous deals yes the amounts paid might have been higher BUT that's only because of the higher quality of players we was looking for and amount of investment available to us.

Have we made mistakes? Of course but we made just as expensive ones in the past again when you put our finances at the time against our finances now Chris Sutton for example was just as much as a expensive mistake at the time as Torries was at the time.

Well, we have spent less than others and still managed the title last season.
Yes the squad needs to evolve a bit but we don't have a manager to do that at the moment.

I'll always remember us signing Zola. I'd watched him play for Napoli in Italy and knew we were getting something special even at 30 years old. He cost £4.5m but many clubs probably thought he was past his best. I loved that policy of bringing in the old greats like Vialli, Gullit, Zola, Desailly etc.

As others have said, times have changed. You can forget all about signing British players for a bargain price, even average players will cost a small fortune. Smart scouting overseas can produce a few bargains, but clubs right down the league pyramid are now much more aware of any promising youngsters than they were 20 years ago.
We've still had some bargain signings recently, I would say Azpil and Zouma represent good value for money by today's standards.

Clubs are not really going to sell us players on the cheap any more.

You would have to be awful at business if you are going to sell a player to a club with the money we have cheaply.

Come on would any of us?

Its not even a new thing, Remember Ken Bates talking about wanting to buy a player called up asked about him and was given a figure, He thought it was rather high called soon after about the same player yet said was from a different club and was given a lower price.

If your selling something and you know money is no object or they have a load of cash to spend would anyone not bump up the price?

More so when there is actual no way of measuring what a player is worth,

2-1, better not throw it away now!

Gooooooaaaaaal, Kennedy! 2 - 1

Where are the muffins who said the younger players aren't good enough? Where are they now?!

Come on the Chels'!

2-2, it was coming!

The players were just not good enough again. I wonder if a certain poster still reckons we're playing better post-Mourinho? It's the same old dross regardless of manager.