I hope we won’t waste a good chunk of the budget on yet another obscenely expensive defender. It’s almost impossible to gauge a player playing in the Eredivisie. The only high-level competitive match that I saw him play in was against United, and he didn’t stand out as anything special. Davinson Sanchez looked the far superior defender in that game.
It’s funny how quickly some people seem to forget just how good Stones was for part of this season. Before his injury he was arguably our best player. He just needs to be afforded a bit more time and I’m sure that he’ll be able to show regularly that level of form.
We play with risk. The central defenders are often left exposed and, as such, any defensive errors are punished more frequently. This is what people remember and what gets highlighted in the media and in the statistics - not the errors that go unpunished. This is precisely why we have people claiming United’s and Burnley’s centre-backs to be amongst the best in the league.
The system employed by Mourinho includes a relatively high level of defensive redundancy. It should come under no surprise that, in contrast, defenders struggle under Pep’s system, where they often find themselves having to deal with 1-on-1, 2-on-1 and 3-on-2 situations. I believe that I recall Pep acknowledging this in an interview last season. As good as this kid may turn out to be, the transfer budget is far better spent in other areas. We could spend another £200m on centre-backs without improving the squad one bit.
