The start of the EPL season. At this point in time I would say NO.. I think Fergie is going to give the youngsters a chance...
You just had to do it didn't you...... Now we'll get all the dwarf tossing fan boys coming on here for 10 days straight posting about their Michael Owen man crush.... Thanks Yoss.......
Don't be discouraged because of the lack of press. Now that the club is private, there's going to be less information available. Probably a good thing, since it'll make buying easier generally. Is annoying though, since the anticipation can be kind of fun.
Well ... the frustrating thing is that SAF insists that we must hit the ground running this season because there is no room for a loss. If we are indeed going to add to the midfield, wouldn't it be prudent to get someone here in time to blend in and make an impact sometime before Xmas??
I realize that slotting a new midfielder into the team is harder than grooming a new striker into the fold, but we signed Rooney on the final day of the transfer window last summer, plus he was injured for a few months, but there's no doubt that the purchase paid dividends and we were a better team for it. We have talks with Ballack's agent set for next week, if that doesn't look likely to happen, things could move very quickly in other areas...
Yes, its important to have players who can gell w/ our other players, but really the only positions we *could* add a starter in is CM and CB. The CM would be someone of Ballack/Baptista like proportions, a guy who is too good to sit the bench, forcing a continued 3CM formation or a rotation of Keane/Scholes/New Guy (who will get the short end of the stick until he's settled) in a 442. A CB, well it takes time to form a great partnership, but playing next to Rio is really easy, he'll keep his man out of the action and even bail out your behind from time to time, so there's no rush in adding another CB if that's what we want to do (it isn't - me DS, hell most of us would like to see Chivu or Andrade added to the squad) because SAF really believes in Brown and Silvestre. Apart from CB and CM though, we've got no room for another starter, that's not to say we can't add some depth, in fact if we get a new CM then Park and Fletcher would be 2 good bench players, with O'Shea and Smith/Saha taking up 2 other bench positions we only really need either for O'Shea to be our stand in CM/DM or our backup to our fullbacks and then to add someone who can perform at a high level whatever role he does not fill. By this I mean, if O'Shea is our LB/RB then we need someone to play CM because getting limited games is hard enough but splitting them at different positions will pretty much ruin any chance of ever becoming a starter.
I think we will, with everyday that's passin' it's lookin' more and more like Ballack will become our player, he wants to leave Bayern for a team that does better in Europe, or in his words "A big european club", both teams are gonna be in the same place on July 27th, where we might be able to pound out a deal, and he's also in his last year of his contract, for Bayern to not sell him now and just let him go on a free would be a stupid mistake. I personally like the idea of Ballack coming to our team for a fee rumoured to be around 15m, he will hold us over perfectly until Mr. Jones is ready to step in for himself.
I think your right about our interest in him ... we do appearently have a meeting set up. But if Bayern can't get him resigned soon, they will shop him. It's much like our situation with Rio ... get him signed soon or shop him while his value is high.
I'm not sure if it's a meeting scheduled, the talk is just that both parties will be in the far east at the same time, and it's not illegal to contact a player when his contract is 'unprotected'. What happened to all the Gatusso talk? I thought Milan's signing of Vogel would fuel it, but I've heard nothing in the last few weeks... That's an experienced midfielder if there ever was one.
With the recent developments of Jones and possibly Smith both going to replace Keano in the future, I would wager that this has an effect on whether we buy another midfielder. I do not know whether we will use the money on Ballack or not. Perhaps that is just a decoy for a big buy at the center back position?