Jesus I don’t know where to start...
1. Napoli fans never said he’s been bang average this season. He just haven’t played his best. If you want bang average, watch Stones or Otamendi play.
2. He is right footed. If he played most of his games well on left side on a right foot, I can only imagine he would improve moving to the ’correct side’ given his dominant foot.
3. Can you imagine the price we’d have to pay for a 26-27 year old Koulibaly in a normal market and with that Napoli president? I doubt 120 million euros would’ve been enough a few years ago. At the very least 100m.
4. How many games did you watch Upamecano? Isn’t this year his first year in the Champions League? You’re willing to splash the big cash on an unproven CB just because you want something younger? He could might as well be a young Otamendi for all we know. We can’t afford any more mistakes buying a CB. 55m on Stones was enough of an expensive mistake.
One good game against Atletico doesn’t make him a better pick than Kouli. That’s just reactionary, and based on feelings.
The latter is probably correct, I doubt there is only one option for centre half on market post CL. Would make sense they're taking time. Wouldn't expect this to be done so quickly anyway considering Jorginho talks beforeThose sources are contradictory to say the least.
CalcioNapoli24 wrote 4 hours ago that the deal is going to be done in the next few hours and that ADL had lowered the price.
SSCNapoliNews wrote 20 minutes ago that the negotiations are braking and no offer's been made.
If it was that easy you wonder why no one did it the previous two seasons.
I have no clue how you come to these conclusions mate. This is the second time I'm telling this directly to you, I don't think Koulibaly will be a huge upgrade on Stones. I think he'll be a small short term upgrade but I'm not convinced he'll be a long term solution. If we buy him for 70m this season and he isn't a disaster we won't buy another big name centre back for at least a couple of seasons, and I fear that might hurt us more.
The latter is probably correct, I doubt there is only one option for centre half on market post CL. Would make sense they're taking time. Wouldn't expect this to be done so quickly anyway considering Jorginho talks before
If we’re buying young to supplement a squad then fair enough. If we’re buying to fix an apparent deficiency then I disagree with you. Given on past experiences we know the club don’t buy in order to get money back if the signing fails. We have many examples of that, particularly when we bargain shopped due to ffp earlier, although ffp now will have minimal impact on our signings (unless club planning on spending really stupid money).It's not a major reason to worry but we are financially hamstrung by FFP to some degree, so being able to recover a proportion, if not all, the money on any signing is just sensible forward planning. You wouldn't buy a car without considering the depreciation costs, as well as the other associated costs. It's just common sense.
Surely it depends on where you hold your high line (or off side trap). If on edge of box or half way line you need a pacer player for one not the other. To play the way we do we need pace in the middle of the back 4You don’t need quick players to make the offside trap work. Walker, our quickest player, tends to be the one to play them onside most of the time. Against Lyon they did it unwell but Walker has close to zero awareness of when someone is offside. We need quick players because we can’t rely on them to be competent enough to hold a line properly. Other teams manage it despite being relatively slow.
That's simply not true either, you have no idea who will emerge as one of the better CB's over the course of the next 12 months. That's why clubs have scouting systems (or in Liverpool's case have access to other people's scouting systems). Last summer no one had even heard of Erling Haaland, it was all João Felix or whoever, suddenly Haaland is the best thing since sliced bread and the one we have to sign up front for example.
Definitey. We see it as fans, the players playing will feel it much more.
Imagine you’re De Bruyne, City is dominating, you’re putting in countless through balls and crosses and finally Agüero scores, then 5 minutes later, the team loses the ball, the opposition counter and score with their first shot in the game, 1-1. It’s happened so many times. The attacking players must be livid especially.
Il Mattino journalists are fairly reliable about Naples too.As said previously, we can’t trust a single source other than a few reliable ones like Fabrizio Romano.
Bernardo Silva was part of the side that knocked us out and (corr), he won the league in that season. Ederson was a League Cup and Winner and Cancelo had a League Winners Medal before they joined us.
You don’t need quick players to make the offside trap work. Walker, our quickest player, tends to be the one to play them onside most of the time. Against Lyon they did it unwell but Walker has close to zero awareness of when someone is offside. We need quick players because we can’t rely on them to be competent enough to hold a line properly. Other teams manage it despite being relatively slow.
CityXtra are saying now that we expect to close the signing in the next 10 days, so it makes sense.
TEN MORE DAY?!! By that time this thread will almost be as long as the John Terry thread 10 years ago!!
Koulibaly is better than Stones on every level, physically he is a beast and this is an area Stones struggles eg Firminho pushing him easily off the ball. Stones is far too error prone imo.I said I'm far from convinced he is a huge upgrade on Stones, and that I do stand by.