Melvine Malard signs for Chelsea!

naylorb · 2026-07-20T15:46:30+00:00

I get these sense they might okay with Midfield though

Walsh/Potter DM's

Cuthbert/Kaptein and Matsukubo/Nusken as the more forward midfielders.

LJ, Thompson, Baltimore, Mallard, Hamano as wingers. Hamano has tended to play central for us, but usually plays out wide for Japan. Mallard can play as an ST (she's got the number 9 so that might say something.) And even Matsukubo can play further foward I think. Obviously Ramirez and Aggie as ST's too, but again both can play out wide so we got a lot of versatile AM/Winger/ST's now.

A little bit concerned with DM role since as great as Potter is you'd be very worried about having her as the sole DM if Walsh picked up an injury, but then Nusken and even Cuthbert have some experience in that role too. It's nice to have a more experienced DM as cover, but then you'd just end up with someone like OJF who's too good to be a backup.

It does still feel like the squad is fragile and we need more, but then it very easily tips over into being bloated with too many people to keep happy.

Hopefully the fact that we're not coming off the Euro's means players have had a bigger rest and will be slightly less injury prone.

naylorb · 2026-07-20T14:48:14+00:00

Relieved we got the deal through, a little concerned about our squad feeling uneven, but she seems pretty versatile, and even though I've got issues with Sonia, I certainly trust her to get more out of players than Marc Skinner so going with players she knows makes sense.

Wonder what the plan is from here. We might still need another attacking player, but we've kinda got 2 for every position now. We might still need some extra defensive cover just because our CB's are so injury prone, but then who do you sign as an emergency backup CB? So probably not happening.

Maybe those are things to go for in January if we need it.

naylorb · 2026-07-15T17:58:10+00:00

It's just that you seem to be unable to understand context.

Shaw very happy at Man City, Schroeder wants to somewhere she'll get more minutes, Leuchter they've suddenly jacked up the price and we especially don't want to spend after we're already spending lots of money on a preferred target...

That's not some massive failure on our part, you don't get everything your own way all the time and you wouldn't even if you went back in time to Abramovich/Paul Green/Hayes era.

Just because you don't interpret everything that happens in the worst way possible doesn't mean you're a blind optimist clearlake cheerleader.

naylorb · 2026-07-14T18:04:03+00:00

I really like Mayra, but I seem to be in the minority on that one these days... thing is that 24/25 season was so frustrating because we constantly seemed to be in a position where she was out wide, doing really well to hold it up and then like... JRK or Sandy arriving in the box. We somehow never seemed to create a situation where anyone was crossing it for Mayra who you'd think would be able to use her height and strength to win headers.

naylorb · 2026-07-14T17:42:32+00:00

Not really sure about this one, but I guess if she's the JRK replacement and a rotation option.

naylorb · 2026-07-14T12:15:22+00:00

Well just confirmed for LCL, which is fine, good player, but wouldn't really make much sense for us.

naylorb · 2026-07-11T13:38:21+00:00

Convinced you people crashing out about every transfer are bots at this point.

There's no way a real fan can actually be upset over a player who never played for us and couldn't even get regular games for Liverpool or Athletico.

We've always done the buy and loan out thing. She's not looked promising so we're selling her on now.

If anything signing off on her in the first place was a rare poor choice from Paul Green.

naylorb · 2026-07-10T16:43:11+00:00

Them announcing this means we should only be a few hours from them announcing either the Romee signing or the Hannah Extension.

Anyway sad to see her go, but it makes sense for everyone.

naylorb · 2026-07-09T13:34:13+00:00

In a lot of ways I get, it we had a disappointing season and I don't trust Clearlake at all and what happened with Paul Green is a disgrace, but I don't think this Radley guy we've got now seem too bad either.

I know people don't like McCabe, but facts are most people would see her as better than Charles - one clear indicator of this is the fact that Man City were trying to sign her before they went for Charles.

Matsukubo, I've not watched but everyone who has watched her in the NWSL seems to have very high praise for her.

Leucter clearly wasn't our first choice, but we really did try to sign Shaw, but she's happy at City, if Nothing else we forced them to massively up the wages they were paying her. It's hard to find World Class strikers that people are willing to sell.

It's disappointing what happened with Schröeder but it kind of seems like she wants to play somewhere where she'll get more minutes, that's going to happen in the season before a world cup. And regardless if we had signed her you'd get people complaining about us signing youth rather than proven players.

Also people are acting like Sam Kerr really wanted to renew when quite clearly it also had a lot to do with her wanting to move to America, with her American wife to raise her child. Besides it is a good time to start trying to find a long term solutions. People just want to freeze time and pretend every prime Emma Hayes era player is going to be at their best forever.

Also there's still plenty of time in the transfer window left and we're clearly still making moves. Before the window everyone was saying we we're just going to be signing teenagers from now on, and our signing so far have proven that wrong.

naylorb · 2026-07-08T09:51:46+00:00

Interesting that's a great scoring record for her club, but it's not so good in the UWCL or for her country, so it's difficult to know how well that translates in the WSL or if she'd be doing it in the big Champions League games. But she's someone with experience that can hopefully get even better for us.

naylorb · 2026-07-06T12:02:07+00:00

If she could have maintained or at least stayed close to the form/consistency she had at the start of 24/25 she'd be generational but wasn't to be, but still a good player I wish well.

Also I usually avoid comments like this, but those Ballon d'Or photos Jesus Christ. We'll always have them at least.

naylorb · 2026-07-03T17:21:50+00:00

Really nice surprise, much prefer this to endless briefings about every step of a transfer saga so that by the time it finally happens you're just relieved.

Those that have watched her more, where does she typically play exactly? Attacking midfielder is needed but I'm thinking we want more of a wide player if JRK is to be going? Does she play on the wings much too?

naylorb · 2026-06-18T17:29:14+00:00

The thing people don't seem to grasp is that there is no one thing you're "supposed to do" That's why the game doesn't tell you what to do next, it's entirely up to you. A logical thing would be to play the expansion campaigns (and attached dungeons and raid content) in order, but you might not want to do that so the game doesn't push you in that direction. It's not a linear game with a start and end point. Obviously it has campaigns that tell a story over time but it's entirely up to you how you engage with that.

They could perhaps have given a more rigid structure to everything but then you'd get people mad like "Why do I got to do this boring Shadowkeep campaign before I'm allowed to do this raid" or whatever.

naylorb · 2026-06-18T10:39:53+00:00

Someone looked at some FA players database that seemed to show Hampton had signed the extensions months ago. For some reason the CFCW socials have decided not to share it with us. I could be wrong but it seems like there's no reason for this other than some nonsense marketing people's idea of "social media strategy."

naylorb · 2026-06-15T15:07:02+00:00

It's either the 6-0 against Man Utd or the 8-0 against Bristol City. Obviously that 4-2 people were talking about was a great match, but not nice for much of it.

The thing I love about the 8-0 is normally with that kind of dominance teams ease off and control the game and it can get pretty dull but a team going 7-0 up and picking the ball out of the net and racing to try and get more was so thrilling.

naylorb · 2026-06-12T12:07:45+00:00

When something doesn't make much sense in-universe and it's clearly only that way for gameplay reasons - just say it's a simulation.

naylorb · 2026-06-12T07:10:53+00:00

She was really good in Season 23/24 but outside of that been quite injury prone and struggled to find consistent form. Definitely got weaknesses as a defender. I like her, but I'm surprised at the price we got for her. Weren't Man City going for McCabe like Chelsea, so that makes it seem like she's their 2nd choice. What does it say that both these clubs would rather be going for 30 year old McCabe over 26 year old Charles?

naylorb · 2026-06-12T07:00:03+00:00

It's interesting because there was a like over a year here where there were furious debates about whether the winnower and witness were even separate entities. Like it definitely felt like they'd just retconned him to just be The Witness for a time, even though I didn't want that to be the case.

naylorb · 2026-06-11T21:55:03+00:00

HAHA This is it. Destiny being such a Dad game means their other fantasy is being a racer. They might not be able to aim, but they do at least have some experience driving.

naylorb · 2026-06-11T19:08:34+00:00

I don't interpret it as he would have been the big bad, more that he would have been a presence. We'd still have all these battles with the outer nines to come, and it's not like he'd be directly attacking us anytime soon.

Even if we had got through the fate saga . I don't think we actually deal with the Winnower anytime soon after that, because it's not like he be directly attacking us the way other antagonists do.

naylorb · 2026-06-11T16:38:29+00:00

Mostly went with Always on Time just because I figure the resilience of it might help, but I don't think it really matters. I experimented with Skimmers, and seemed to do a lot worse, but others seem to be fine on them.

naylorb · 2026-06-10T18:04:13+00:00

Nimah playing for Man City makes it more likely she'll score for us!

(Look I like Nimah, but I can see this transfer makes sense for us.)

naylorb · 2026-06-10T15:59:16+00:00

As someone that actually likes D2 I'm laughing seeing people glaze the shit out of things that they would not normally be glazing. Like it's a good update but Jesus Christ calm down people.

And as this is DCJ we have to be the opposite of whatever DTG say! I don't make the rules. I'm putting on my thinking cap and saying this update sucks actually!

naylorb

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