yea, the way Dani was treated at the end was really sh*tty. fuk the board for how they handled that. but i don't know about Yaya. who would you have sold to keep him? Xavi, Iniesta or Busi?? as good as he was that was the right decision, he would never have settled for playing at CB or sitting on the bench. anyway, i thought TitoTata was talking about more recent sales in the past 2-3 years.
We did not sell Dani, he had the right to rescind his contract and sign for free elsewhere, and he did so. I agree it was bad for us that he left, so would've preferred we not allow him that out, but he negotiated for it, and at least did not leave us for the season when we could not sign players.
Paulinho then? Regarding Toure, Xavi Iniesta Busi couldn't, shouldn't play 50+ games each season. Also we talk about them as they were 200% every game, week in week out, there were times I remember Xavi was so piss poor boring playing it safe with no assists etc. But it's all in the past now!
Yaya wouldn't have accepted playing 50% of the games. It worked out in the end. Being critical of decisions that worked ... that's crazy.
It can always get better ;-) I still belive with Yaya that Barca would have won 1-2 more trophies. If he was Masia player maybe he'd be treated differently. Its a shame players get preferential treatment depending on origin. Perfect example is Craperto, if he wasn't from Masia or even white, he'd be playing in a midtable team.
Yeah, Yaya got beat out by a younger Busquets for the starting DM role, he did not want to back up Busquets, and he did not want to play CB either (or we would have kept him). He wanted to start, and actually preferred being more of an attacking mid (he played forward as a youth), and we did not want him playing there ahead of Xavi, Iniesta, or even Keita, our super sub box-to-box midfielder. We also had both Thiago and Jonathan dos Santos and Muniesa available in midfield, so Yaya and his troublesome agent were allowed to leave, agent got a big fee, we got 24M back when that was alot, and Yaya got a 5 year deal and the chance to play more attacking midfield and be a starter and an important piece of a well funded makeover of City.
Todibo (who turned 20 today) is supposed to be close to a loan to AC Milan (between ACM and FCB, ACM still need to convince Todibo), with them having an option to purchase for 20M Euros at end of 6 month loan. No word if we have an option to buy back for a higher amount, but presumably that is something we'd want to include. Also no word on if there is a fee for the loan besides them paying his salary. I don't mind him being loaned out to get PT but I don't want us selling him as he seems promising to me and Pique keeps getting older.
Well (1) not official yet, (2) Lenglet is good enough, (3) we are talking about 4th CB and Valverde likes Araujo as much or more than Todibo. And (4) hopefully Umtiti can stay healthy and re-gain his former greatness. But yeah, I'd prefer we keep Todibo. i fear that this is a move to allow us to spend more money on a big move (please not Neymar) or re-pay those we already made (nearly 200M on Griezmann and De Jong).
As far as the CB’s go, we are walking a very thin line of hope and despair. Old man Pique, bless his soul, has been our best CB this season, but he’s getting older and more prone to injuries. God forbid anything happens to him. From what we’ve seen up to this point, the Umtiti and Lenglet tandem doesn’t quite inspire confidence. Umtiti is one injury away of being out long-term again. We are clinging to the hope of it not happening and him regaining his past form. Jury’s still put on Lenglet imo. Our defense has been an issue and Lenglet has been blowing hot and cold. Ter Stegen has come up big on several occasions to maybe mask our defensive woes. I haven’t seen enough of Todibo vs high calibre opponents to know where he stands currently. Could he take over at present time if Pique or one of the other CB’s get injured?
He has a long career ahead of him. Still think he was worth the money Juve paid, but definitely not worth crying about yet.
Some would say we already have four promising 20 year old CBs under contract and/or club option through 2023, all are De Ligt's size or slightly taller (1.89-1.91M), but only one has remotely as much top flight experience (Todibo started for Toulouse until they realized he would not re-sign with them last year, we got him last January for a song as he'd already agreed to join on a Bosman in June 2019). Today we loaned him out to Schalke for 18 months, they have a buy option, but we can trump it. Hopefully he will gain valuable first team experience on another club's dime (they pay salary and a loan fee which exceeds what we paid for him last January). He's valued at 11-12M already, without playing first team football in over a year. Still in Barca B are Chumi, Cuenca, and Araujo, all 20 years old, also under contract/club option till 2023, all valued at 2-3M without playing any first team, first division football. Chumi has been in La Masia since 2014. Cuenca we signed in 2017 from Alcorcon, and Araujo in 2018 from Uruguay's Boston River. All four have represented France, Spain, Spain, and Uruguay youth national teams at at least one of the U-19---U-21 levels, though Chumi was a bench player at U-19 who last saw game time at U-17. Obviously de Ligt did more by 19 and 20 than any of them, Netherlands NT, Ajax captain, now frequently starting for Juventus. But he also cost more than 40x in fee and probably 5-15x in salary. So we hope our 'shot gun' approach works out and one of these 4 is a future starter or valued back up. With Todibo out on loan the thinking is that Araujo will be most likely to deputize as 4th CB, but Setien may see things differently. For the price and salary paid and what we've seen so far after big transfers I'm glad we missed out on de Ligt for now, and glad we did not pay big bucks for John Stones (as some here urged). I also hate Mino.
Most clubs would like him and/or Van Dijk but the window closed on getting those two as they are both well paid starters on a couple of the best clubs in the world who are generally not sellers. Our interest in Laporte was often rumored and his release clause was big at 65M Euros, but Bilbao wanted 100% of it (plus taxes) instead of negotiating a lower fee. Man C paid it. Bilbao paid Inigo Martinez's release clause of 32M Euros (another player we'd been linked with), leading us to pay Lenglet's release clause of 35M. Pique (4.5M), Umtiti (25M), and Lenglet (35M) were all great buys for the price we paid, but Pique is getting old, Umtiti has had 18+ months when he is injured as often as not, and some think Lenglet is good not great.