Good Morning, your mixing things up now i believe you are quoting my convo with Sofablake abt James stretching play at RW? . Sancho can get goals assist so can ziyech silva salah, im not playing down Sanxho but supporting my claim for inverted RW. Its not about individuals but the idea of balanced front 3/attack.
there are some weak links from less than solid sources with a january Arturo Vidal move. interesting thought. wouldn't be the worst option
maybe. likely true, but it's January - if we decide to do something what else can we do that's realistic? other than activating a release clause which will probably cost us somewhere around our net spend in the summer which probably rules it out anyway
Might be a good injection of Keane-ish mentality too. Since everyone seems to think we need someone like that.
I'd still consider Vidal if he somehow was still desperate to leave Barca due to lack of pt. Would approach them for a loan for the remainder of the year (will be 33yrs old by the end of this season). And if that worked out, would possibly look to sign him for another year, depending on our activity in the transfer market next summer in particular. Not sure if Barca would want to let him go though, but it would be worth the try: definitely could still contribute in our midfield on some level or another. Partey though is the one I'd hope we could really make a push for next summer, even if it would be something of a longshot.
actually, thinking about this more 8 years ago people said his knees were trash and not to buy. he's done alright since then though
Pretty much this. We need help in the midfield in the form of guys we can sign for 1-3 year contracts til the kids can take over.
not quite. we also need a ready to go CM. preferrably young. Ndombele would have been great but you know we decided to only buy defenders and one prospect instead of Ndombele, Fernandes, De Jong or any of the other top mids available over the last year
Well true, we need a Thomas and Pogba alone with Bruno with a McT and Garner and Levitt ready to spell them.
the sad part is £100m or just over would land Bruno & Partey and set us up nicely if we do decide to persist with the youthful rebirth. again, we can easily afford that with the plethroa of sponsorships but the owners and all so...
The reason I'd be ok with Vidal on loan for January is that he would be able to help with some relatively solid depth for 5mos or so, which our midfield is in bad need of. It's far from ideal but we have put ourselves in a bad situation by completely ignoring the midfield last summer when they were good options ready for the taking. And as we've seen, we have already paid for that neglect. Vidal (on loan) should be nothing more than a temporary, very short term solution. What we need to do now is identify good targets we can sign, that can help us for the medium to long term. Partey, as an example, fits the bill because he is still relatively young (26) and would be pretty cheap also. There surely are others as well. But CM really has to be an area of focus for us in the next couple of windows.
No way in ********ing hell, Bruno would be had for less than 80. We'd likely have had him if he was available for 55-60. For the love of god we don't need to sign Vidal or anyone at peak age or above. We need to sign players 22-24. The truth is, we are not a good team and we will not win any meaningful trophies in the next two years. We could build something to compete in year 3, but not if we are signing high salaried players past their best.
Agree - based on the last few transfer windows and with Woody comments on three signings a summer window being hard enough this will be a slow rebuild. With a slow rebuild you can't waste such limited resources on players in their late 20's let alone players in their 30's. Apart from being too few, the one thing the club got right last window was the ages of the three players we bought.
Not sure where this goes and everyone who's interested probably already saw it. But I liked the article so what the hell. https://www.espn.com/soccer/manches...the-inside-story-on-how-everything-fell-apart
Excellent read indeed. Expected some kind of drop off post SAF for sure, but never to that extent. Even after Moyes, thought at the very least it would only be a matter of time before we were genuinely competitive again. It's just sad and hard to take, especially since there does not seem to be any end in sight.
you're assuming we were even in. i am basing it off of circa £40m for Partey and ~£70m for Bruno. both supposed to be buyouts. dunno about Bruno's new deal now though
We've missed the Bruno window. Between his new contract raising his release clause and us continuing to be an unattractive option to someone looking to win something any time soon, I can't see us being his first pick and I can't see us forking out more money for the same player we apparently rejected (for ********ing stupid reasons). It'd be classic Ed though.
I don't believe the paper trash about buyouts. Look, supposedly Haaland has a 20M buyout right now. No way he'd be on the market with a buyout that low. This is a club that got mugged buying Fellaini when there were no takers. I can't see us getting value in either of those acquisitions.
Hopefully these past two matches will do us a world of good trying to attract players. Bit hard trying to sell ourselves to high quality young talent off the back of being dominated by Sheffield Utd.
Some rumors lately that Chelsea will try and take advantage of their lifted ban and Sanchos unhappiness and move for him next month.
Well we just have to do what we can tbh. I kind of don't see Chelsea spending that sort of money on one player. But we could move in two or three other positions tbh. What's happening with Lo Celso, out of interest? Surely his loan at Spurs is going to be cut short? And surely he's still an extremely good player?
Honestly I don’t know. I almost forgot he was there. I didn’t think it was a loan, I thought it was a permanent deal. But he probably thinks he has another shot under new management. And I think Jose has already said Eriksens minutes will depend on if he commits his future to the club. So Lo Celso minutes might be on the uptick soon.