Let's not get too carried away, Xhaka also bosses the midfield when he has more time and space on the ball playing for his national team. Zinchenko is very left-footed and would be easier to press in the PL as a CM. If Xhaka leaves and City replace him with Cucurella, he'd be good depth at LCM and LB, just maybe not a regular starter.
I got shouted down on reddit and FB for this, but not getting CL football despite it "not being planned for" absolutely ********ing kills getting players. Its easier to get a guy like Jesus when you can say "heres out project, come be a starting striker for a Champions League team". Because right now, all we have is a project with 2 inexperienced people running it that has yielded an FA cup, some 7/8 placed finishes and a 5th placed finish. Not really inspiring stuff.
Jesus will come just for the money. Doubt he cares for UCL. It's just that we would have to pay through the nose to get him, Gnabry etc
Of course this is true. Why would any CL level player sign? It only makes sense for young players on the way up, because Arsenal can pay a lot. It's why Arse might get Tielemanns, because none of the top 4 want him and Utd are probably too stupid to sign him
This is one reason why Utd struggle to sign elite players compared to the Ser Fergus era There are other EPL teams that pay the big money, and are more successful. Sancho may have already ruined his career by going there
i mean, even when we had CL football or if we had CL football, we were never the primary destination. first options went to real madrid and barcelona because of name + history, bayern if you're german, the main italian clubs if you're italian, PSG, chelsea, manchester city, and manchester united because of the money they could put up. we either snuck young players on the way up, especially out of less money heavy league (like france or holland with nasri or van persie) or real young (with fabregas or bellerin), we take on stars that wanted out/were no longer wanted by their club (with sanchez and ozil), or, hell, we pay a tier over what they were worth for flawed players (with mustafi and xhaka).
Yes - Nasri and Ramsey were probably the last top talents to sign back in 08 IMO You could make an argument for Martin O but he had a significant career derailment I don't think a player like Auba would move to the club at the moment
good call on ramsey, yeah. i remember him picking us over manchester united. but i think those were his top picks. i remember nasri being rated but i don't recall there being a whole lot of competition for him that window. i think there were more competitions when he signed for real madrid at 16. i think his various loans were considered successful but there didn't seem to have much competition for permanent signings? i don't know if teams just didn't think they could tempt him away from real madrid or something. i don't think so either. but, at the same time, if i understand correctly, his choice was . . . us or nothing else after neither real madrid nor barcelona moved for him.
France down 1-0 to Austria, deservedly so. Deschamps is such an awful coach. Saliba is playing RCB. Stepped up to try to play an offside trap while his teammates did not, got beat to the cross right in front of the net for Austria's goal.
France were much better after he came on. Of course, they brought on a young forward from PSG at the same time, so the improvement may not have been entirely due to Guendouzi Nkunku was really good of the bench, too. Much better than Griezmann.
Watching the Peru/Aus match. The broadcast quality is REALLLLLY poor on FS1. Hoping this isn't an indication of what the WC will look like.
Amazing that Australia took Redmayne into these qualifiers, only made the cut because Arnold was his manager at Sydney. He would be like, 7th or 8th best keeper in Australia, is 31, and gets thrown on end of ET to save penalties to get Australia to a WC in his 3rd appearance. Imagine if England threw Ruddy into the Euro Finals penalty shoot outs? Its almost like that. Then begins some WORLD CLASS shithousery by 1. Throwing the Peru GKs water bottle away. It had instructions on all the Aussies likely to take penalties. It explains why he was so weird with his positioning when Mabil was taking his pen. 2. Dances like a ********ing maniac while the Peru players are teeing up penalties. 3. When the Peru player is lining up for a pen, Redmayne just wanders off away from the goal to ******** about a little. 4. Makes a save, then pulls the dumbest ********ing face immediately after. Would love Australia to play England in the pre WC warm ups just to see some Redmayne/Ramsdale shenanigans.
He's not even good at saving penalties either! He was 4 for 31 in his career, so about 13%. That's like 9 points below average! Incredible.
Yeah I didn’t watch but apparently Ramsdale was atrocious for England today. And he’s been pretty middling for the past six months in all aspects.
Bollox He’s been fabulous for Arsenal all season hence him snatching the number two keeper slot Tonight he had no chance with any of the goals - simply horrendous defending . Two were apparently slight deflections as well but I can’t confirm that at this moment
He was good in the first half of the season. He was one of the worst goalkeepers in the league in the second half.
he was much stronger in 1st half of the season, yeah. once the defense was less fixed, he was more vulnerable.
Aaron Ramsdale ranked 40th out of 42 Premier League goalkeepers in Goals saved compared to Post Shot xG, allowing 4.6 more goals than expected based on the locations for an 'average' goalkeeper. He ranked 200th out of 218 in the big five leagues combined.— Scott Willis (@scottjwillis) June 14, 2022