Kalidou Koulibaly

twosips said:
Koulibaly is only a month older than Van Dijk. He's just as complete as well IMO. For £80m i'd not complain, especially considering the level he could reach under Guardiola. I don't think this will happen, but I bet Liverpool don't regret the £75m they spent on VVD...
Click to expand...

Van Dijk was 26 when they bought him, and was pretty much a guaranteed instant success as he'd got 3 seasons experience in the league.

Koulibaly will be 28, has only played well in Italy, and does he even speak the language? It's impossible to be the leader at the heart of defence a la Kompany/Van Dijk if you can't communicate with everyone. We could quite feasibly spend 18 months waiting for him to get comfortable here and he'd be on the verge of 30 - or he could never settle in England.


He's a very good player, I'm not sure he'd be a very good transfer for us.
 
domalino said:
Van Dijk was 26 when they bought him, and was pretty much a guaranteed instant success as he'd got 3 seasons experience in the league.

Koulibaly will be 28, has only played well in Italy, and does he even speak the language? It's impossible to be the leader at the heart of defence a la Kompany/Van Dijk if you can't communicate with everyone. We could quite feasibly spend 18 months waiting for him to get comfortable here and he'd be on the verge of 30.
Click to expand...

Eh, age is irrelevant, again, the experience and composure counts. He may take time but it'll be worth it. Experience is squad is necessary especially after losing someone like Kompany, he could be a leader in a year, obviously there's staff and coaches to help him settle and he'll be able to communicate with that backline in no time, they speak football, that's all that counts
 
catalyst said:
Eh, age is irrelevant, again, the experience and composure counts. He may take time but it'll be worth it. Experience is squad is necessary especially after losing someone like Kompany, he could be a leader in a year, obviously there's staff and coaches to help him settle and he'll be able to communicate with that backline in no time, they speak football, that's all that counts
Click to expand...

Impossible to take any comment that starts with "age is irrelevant" seriously.

If you're investing £85m in an asset, age is very fucking relevant, espeically in a defender with exceptional pace being one of his stand out qualities.


If you spend 85m on Koulibaly and he's not a success, over 30 years old you will not see any meaningful amount of that money again.
If you spend it on a 21 year old, you can still recoup 30-50% after 3 mediocre years.
 
Last edited:
domalino said:
Impossible to take any comment that starts with "age is irrelevant" seriously.

If you're investing £85m in an asset, age is very fucking relevant, espeically in a defender with exceptional pace being one of his stand out qualities.
Click to expand...

I agree age is relevant but I think people sometimes have a habit of overstating the importance of them being young (in terms of value for money). There definitely seems to be a trend towards players running their contracts down in order to receive huge wage increases and/or signing on fees. People talk as though if we sign De Ligt we'll have him for 10 years for the cost of the initial transfer fee. Given Raiola is his agent, you can't bank on him staying longer than 4 or 5 years. If he did stay longer, we'd pay through the nose to retain his services.

I haven't seen a lot of Koulibaly but from what I have seen he looks top class. He's only just about to turn 28 so should easily have 4 seasons left at the very top and probably five. If we're in for him on the premise we deem him to be one of the top few in the world then £80-90m for four or five years isn't terrible value. Same age we signed Fernandinho and I don't think we'd have felt short changed if we'd spent that for those peak years we've had out of him.
 
Mon Autre said:
I agree age is relevant but I think people sometimes have a habit of overstating the importance of them being young (in terms of value for money). There definitely seems to be a trend towards players running their contracts down in order to receive huge wage increases and/or signing on fees. People talk as though if we sign De Ligt we'll have him for 10 years for the cost of the initial transfer fee. Given Raiola is his agent, you can't bank on him staying longer than 4 or 5 years. If he did stay longer, we'd pay through the nose to retain his services.

I haven't seen a lot of Koulibaly but from what I have seen he looks top class. He's only just about to turn 28 so should easily have 4 seasons left at the very top and probably five. If we're in for him on the premise we deem him to be one of the top few in the world then £80-90m for four or five years isn't terrible value. Same age we signed Fernandinho and I don't think we'd have felt short changed if we'd spent that for those peak years we've had out of him.
Click to expand...
Raiola isnt De Ligts agent. Hes an intermediary helping his agent with this transfer.
 
domalino said:
Impossible to take any comment that starts with "age is irrelevant" seriously.

If you're investing £85m in an asset, age is very fucking relevant, espeically in a defender with exceptional pace being one of his stand out qualities.


If you spend 85m on Koulibaly and he's not a success, over 30 years old you will not see any meaningful amount of that money again.
If you spend it on a 21 year old, you can still recoup 30-50% after 3 mediocre years.
Click to expand...

There's risk associated to every signing? There always will be. You'd be naff to ignore how good Koulibaly is if you've seen him even for a couple games. Absolute giant and leader in that Napoli backline. Carried their defence for a fair while now. When Liverpool signed VVD they had similar risk too? If he turned out a flop would it matter? That's just the state of market and risk associated. I'm not saying we WILL go and sign him, actually think the links are rubbish. But I'd take him over signing a Maguire any day of the week. If we have the money and can afford him, definitely get him.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
✖
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.