The Saul Griezmann is Barto level bad Jesus ******** City would actually pay money for him. And I personally do not like Saul
It’s far from a bad deal. We get rid of Greizmann’s high wages and Koeman wants a midfielder like Saul, who could still do well. He had a bad 20-21 season, but dude has been solid with Atletico. He’s only 26 years.
Barcelona are in advanced talks with Atlético for the Saúl and Griezmann swap deal. The players already gave the green light to the deal. Barcelona want money in the deal, and now both teams are negotiating on price tags. — @FabrizioRomano
Man I really hate to see Griezmann go, I feel like he was under-appreciated by most Barca fans and was one of our better players particularly this past season. His work rate is amazing and his understanding with Messi has only grown. The trouble is that we need to cut salary and Griez's salary is probably are second largest after only Messi's, and Griez is only interested in returning to Atletico, and even willing to take a pay cut to do so (which he would not agree to for other clubs). Other clubs would love to have Griez but most cannot afford his salary, or, if they can afford it would not also provide us a transfer fee, particularly in pandemic times. So we are stuck with this and Saul is good but honestly it feels like he may just languish like Pjanic. And in Pjanic's case I did not miss Arthur too much, but in Saul's case I feel like we will really miss Griezmann. And when Atletico win La Liga again behind Griez and Suarez... what a sh*t show that will be. Best case would be to make the swap and then sell Saul to Liverpool for 40-50M, but of course to do that might mean realizing all of the loss on buying Griez from Atleti for like 125M (since we not only paid about 110 for release, but later paid a penalty to Atleti for tapping up). What a crap fest if we are stuck with Saul and Pjanic both on the bench behind the ageless but slow afoot Busquets, in large part because of accounting rules (not wanting to recognize a loss)...
Yeah, I thought that too. Better Saul than Wijn or Pjanic but we have some super talented mids including DMs at Barca B and Busquets is enjoying a late career return to greatness as well.
This is moving fast Griezmann would prefer to not train with Barcelona again. He wants to return to Atlético Madrid. [cope]
No !!!!! C'mon guys !!! As long as we have Messi ... there is no place for a free roaming forward / AM in the starting lineup !!! I believe Felix is that type of player. Let's not do the same mistake FFS !
We need depth in midfield though. As it is, there is a pretty big drop off in talent when we sub out any of Busquets, FdJ or Pedri.
Agreed, plus I am pretty sure Felix is on higher wages than Saul, and we really need the wage bill savings as Tebas is being a real douchebag about not signing our new free transfers or re-signing Messi until we have cut the wage bill significantly. From the article BocaFan posted in the season thread: "La Liga president Javier Tebas has warned Barca they must reduce their expenditure markedly to register not just Messi's new contract but those of their other new signings too. Sergio Aguero, one of Messi's longest-serving friends in football, as well as Eric Garcia and Memphis Depay, arrived on free transfers, but if Barca cannot cut enough -- roughly another €100m -- they will not be able to inscribe them for the new campaign. And they will have to let other stars go as well, including one of their highest earners, Antoine Griezmann."
We are not in the market for trades. We are only selling. If its a "trade" then we have to come out with money on top of the player exchange. We have to accept that the squad will be weaker a month from now. Hence, Griezmann for Saul is close to a no-brainer.
Looks like the vultures are circling .. West Ham want Lenglet on LOAN Bayern are trying to get Dest on LOAN
Fair point ... it’s the loan deals that irritate me as we always seem to end up paying their damn wages
That's because the previous mob put the players on unbelievable wages, wages that no other club is going to pay those players.