A Midget's Worst Nightmare, he'll eat you like Breakfast - The Almighty Pepe thread

Still our best CB and our club are refusing to give him a deserved contract. Pathetic by the club

 

Still going strong!

 

Much better than Varane

 

It's his hair! looks so fresh fast and young

 

It's true he puts world class performances more often than not, and I still believe he is our most reliable CB, but our CBs situation in the summer is a delicate one.

A center back lineup consisted of Ramos, Pepe, Varane, Nacho, and Vallejo is simply not practical. My preference would be giving Pepe 1 year extension, moving Nacho to back up either fullback (he will be 1000 times more useful than Danilo and Coentrao), and slowly introducing Vallejo into the team, but can we keep testing Varane's patience? I know he has yet to make a case for himself but he admitted that he was closer to leaving in the past summer than ever before, so I kind of understand it if the club thought of making Ramos-Varane our starting defenders in next season and let Nacho and Vallejo be their backup. It'll still be sad to see Pepe leave, but it looks reality now.

 

Agree, but we can't have another Benz situation of "just because", Varane still has a lot of this season to prove that he deserves to start, I think he can recover, but I would be opposed to making him and Ramos the starters just because he was close to leaving or might leave, whilst on the pitch he puts in subpar after subpar performances, I wouldn't want to watch that for a whole season just to keep Varane happy,

he's got time, he needs to up his game and on a consistent basis to how he used to perform to prove that he is the one who should be given the spot , IMO his game has dropped off somewhat, all of this is not to say keep Pepe until the cows come home , if he's gone at the end of the season I will sorely miss him and his quality as a player his love for the club, his determination and his influence on the team, I'm just commenting on the reason why Varane should or should not be given the starting spot.

 

Vallejo is better than you give him credit for. He is way ahead of Varane atm, go and check his performances against Bayern, Shalke, Wolsburg and BvB this season.

 

Vaelljo has been average in only two out of his last seven games and the reasons why are pretty obvious. Against Ingol his partner got a red card early and he was taken off at HT for a niggle. Against Leverkusen where they lost 3 nil he wasn't even bad and was easily the best of the defenders, he had 2 tackles, 3 interceptions, 1 blocked shot and 10 clearances. The other game you could criticise would be the RB game but they had an early red card and the fact everyone was bad makes that game moot.

Put him in Madrid and Varane in EF and we would see the difference in quality.

 

Overall I agree with your post, but just to clarify I didn't mean we should just hand Varane the starting spot because we are afraid to lose him. Although he is not having a good season, but maybe with a fresh start, having the trust of the club as a main CB and getting the continuity with Ramos in a team with hopefully a better defending system than the one we use now, maybe then we will see the real potential of this guy who was incredible at 19 years old.

It's not guaranteed of course, it can fail and Varane may never regain his form, or it could go the other way around and Pepe may have a drastic drop in performance but that's a risk we gotta take in football, but I just wanted to point out that if we want Pepe to stay then it could be "Pepe for 1 year and then Vallejo taking over vs. Varane for the next 8-10 years" summer question, and that isn't easy one to answer.

To be honest I didn't follow him closely, mostly I'm reading the reviews you guys post here and in other websites, he seems to be doing very well and I didn't suggest otherwise. It's possible he is a head of Varane now but we know RM is an entirely different universe in terms of the expectations so I'm not sure if he will be doing better with the team in his first season than Varane is doing now or if he should replace him in long term for that matter. Being 4th CB in RM seems a pretty good step for him IMO, he will get some playing time with the reliable injury history of our defenders and Ramos' suspensions and at the same time he won't be thrown into the massive pressure here.

 

I'd still take Pepe over any other CB over the course of a full season. Is he a top 5 Madrid CB of all time?

 

I'd say so, my top 5: (no particular order)

Santamaria
Sanchis
Hierro
Ramos
Pepe

 

Contract!!!!! Where is the bloody contract??!!!

 

I really don't get his situation. He wants 2 but the club wants 1 year right?

Ideally we extend and still bring back Vallejo who can get minutes since our CBs are injury prone.

 

He wants 2 years but club is offering 1 with an option to extend for another. I think they have Vallejo in mind and also intend to keep Nacho therefore they are hesitant on renewing. But yeah ideally we extend and still bring back Vallejo. Sell Danilo and Coentrao and use Nacho for the FB positions.

 

Anyone remembers that we were after Chivu before Pepe? Chivu decided to stay in Italy and joined Inter instead. Glad it panned out that way.

 

Most expensive defender in the world at the time I think