I would recommend Pep to sort out our play off the ball. If that not happens and we get Koulibaly not much will change believe me.
Put Stones in a defence that is playing defensive football, maybe two lines of defence with lot of support for defenders and he will look like the defender we spent 50m years ago. Because he looked good in Everton and had potential.
Or see Maguire who we ready to pay up to 60m with his slow speed because he done well at Leicester in a team which nowhere near dominates games, played on counter a lot, provided constant screening from midfield.
Now imagine him here in our defence up at the half way line turning slowly to catch quick runners at speed.
Even at United he does not look so good imo and that is with Fred, Matic, McTominy fucking helping the defence sometimes 3 of them at the same game.
we have big weaknesses in our off the ball game, pressing is not very good and not constant enough, winning ball back sucks a lot of times, giving away cheaply too, offside line has to be perfect etc.
If anyone think we pay 80m pounds for Koulibaly and we start getting clean sheets that would be very wrong. He would offer some improvement on Otamendi and Stones but he looks lot better in Napoli defence than he would look in ours.
Kompany-Lescott was City's best functioning CB pair when De Jong and Bary were screening the defence front of them. Of course that Mancini team was much more defensive than current team.
Look at Liverpool way of defending, with Fabinho, Wijnaldum, Henderson trio working their ass off to fill in for the spaces left open by TAa and Henderson, look at the space front of /matip and VVD.
Compare that kind of midfield roles helping the defending of the team especially vs counters, and ours with Gundogan for example. Does our defenders get confident knowing /Gundogan is front of them? He will never make a tackle to save the defence...
Rodri has no pace to help.