ClaphamFox

It would not surprise me at all if the names currently being linked are a smokescreen to hide who they really want - possibly the mystery 'fourth candidate' mentioned by Matt Law. That could be De Zerbi or possibly Xavi. It's pretty common in this situation for clubs to be heavily linked with one or two names only to announce somebody else.

I doubt anybody will park the bus against us in the PL next season unless it's the last game of the season and they just need a point for survival. We'll be playing against teams that attack us, which would suit Enzo's style of play a lot more.

I keep reading these reports that it's virtually done, then I check the latest odds and see that Enzo is still at 9/2, and it strikes me that anybody who really trusts these sources has the opportunity to fill their boots. For some reason I'm still not entirely convinced, though. I'll probably regret it tomorrow when Enzo is pictured holding a Chelsea scarf aloft in front of the Matthew Harding Stand...

McKenna seems to be their first choice. It looks like Enzo is their back-up plan.

We can’t sign anybody at the moment. We may have a verbal agreement with him, but that’s completely different.

We haven’t signed Vestergaard again yet.

This is definitely more possible than some people think, but I reckon the most likely outcome is a Labour win with small but workable majority.

I suspect our looming points deduction might put him off. In fact, it would put off a lot of the better candidates out there. If Enzo leaves (and I personally don't think he will), we'll be trying to recruit his replacement in a period of high uncertainty given that we won't know how big the deduction is going to be, and therefore how difficult a challenge we'll face next season. That will complicate the recruitment process, you'd have thought.

Plenty of teams have been promoted while playing the kind of possession-based style that Enzo favours and then survived in the PL while continuing to play that style. Brighton, Fulham and Bournemouth are all recent examples. It doesn't always work - eg, Burnley - but quite often it does. Enzo has said on a number of occasions that his style of play is specifically designed to succeed in the PL. We played the way we did last year because he wanted the players to get used to playing in the way that he believes will give us the best chance of re-establishing ourselves as a PL club. Our difficulties in the Championship invariably came against teams that played a low block and showed little attacking intent - we are unlikely to face those kind if tactics very often in the PL. We'll have less possession but more space to attack, which will suit us - our best performances last season all came in games where the opposition had a go at us, which pretty much all PL teams will. Yes, we need to improve the team in a number of areas, but with intelligent recruitment that will be possible. With a few smart buys in key positions I think we will have enough to stay up next season and move on from there. Now, please explain why Enzo's style of play is 'doomed to failure' in the PL.

Enzo has now drifted to 5/1 on Sky Bet. That's not a bad little earner if anybody really thinks he's likely to go there.

I'm not so sure. Enzo has stated several times that he wants to stay at one club and really build something up. This has been reinforced by Guilleme Balagué, who was saying in the WYS podcast the other day that Enzo doesn't really have any ambition to manage at a massive club, and that he'd prefer to be somewhere where he's got more control over things so that he can realise his vision without interference. At Chelsea he would be expected to accept that he's basically just the coach and that he will have to accept constant interference from above from people who don't even understand the game. Both Tuchel and Pochettino ended up leaving because they found it difficult to work under those conditions. Maybe I'm naïve, but I can see Enzo not particularly fancying that. Managers tend to be quite pally with each other and I'm sure Enzo would speak to Pochettino and others before taking the job on. Their experiences might put him off. I'm not suggesting he'd definitely turn it down - maybe he wouldn't. But at the same time I'm not entirely convinced by this "If Chelsea come in, he's definitely off" view that a lot of people seem to have.

Here we go again

Enzo is favourite on betfair at 5/2 but third favourite at 7/2 on skybet, behind McKenna (15/8) and De Zerbi (9/4). These odds tell me that the bookies currently have no inside information on what is going on, and may even mean that Chelsea have no idea who it will be yet.

We will be making a lot of signings this summer.

That timeline above is not accurate. It completely ignores the 1979-83 badge.

You still haven't explained why compensation received for a departing manager would not be counted as income for PSR purposes when compensation paid to a sacked manager would count as a loss for PSR.

A higher release clause would very likely mean we'd also have to give him more if we sacked him. Surely we've been too burnt to make that mistake again?

As am I. Really intrigued about this one.

It's highly unlikely we'd be his, though.

100%. It's astonishing, isn't it?

Our owners have a specific way they want us to play. Neither Moyes nor Cooper would deliver that so would likely not even be considered.

It will be Man City or Arsenal away in the Friday night opener.

Top is a young chairman. I suspect he will have learnt from the Rodgers debacle and avoid making such a mistake in the future. Certainly, you'd have to assume that tying a manager down to a mega contract with an insane termination clause is an error we won't be repeating any time soon.

Chelsea is a basket case. They have an owner who has zero understanding of football but who nonetheless wants to control transfers. They’ve just got rid of a manager who has finally started to turn things around after a tricky start. They are incredibly impatient and make daft decisions. I’d imagine there are plenty of managers who wouldn’t fancy that no matter how good the salary was.

This obsession with Burnley is massively overdone. Yes, they went down while trying to play passing football. But in recent times, Brighton, Fulham and Bournemouth have stayed up while doing the same. There is no evidence that playing more direct football is more likely to succeed in the PL, as Sheff Utd and Luton found this year. Last season, all three promoted teams got relegated playing different styles; the season before, all three stayed up. Enzo obviously has a preferred way of playing, but he has shown he is capable of using tactical variations within that basic philosophy - we won several games last season playing on the counterattack, for example. There is no clearly no guarantee that Enzo will succeed playing his way, but this ridiculous focus on the example of Burnley while ignoring many others is bizarre in the extreme.