Do you believe in the tooth fairy too? - what else do you expect him to say?Seems Pep has decided Vinny is going to stay fit.
Like many before him.
Small left-footed ball-playing CB, same type of defender as L.Hernandez. Good, but not of a star level. If we're buying him, hope it's a rotational solution and we're getting someone better next summer to replace Ota. Better fit than Mangala, no doubt. The only concern is that we would lack powerful tall defenders in case Komps needs rest.
Do you believe in the tooth fairy too? - what else do you expect him to say?
Of course we will get another centre half, we only have 6 defenders at the moment, Pep is not stupid.
I'd hazard a guess that assuming we get Sanchez then we will probably look to bring in a cheap experienced defender, someone happy to not play too often at the back end of career.
Hence why I reckon we may go down the experienced route of a 30something year old, couple of mil or freebie/loan, that can happily not expect too much game time except in emergencies.The beauty of Danilo is it may allow Mendy to play as an emergency CB, should we need to, however, no 25/30m cb is an upgrade on Mangala, we'd be nuts, especially in this market.... ffs I've heard Gibson being banded about..
Now if we can pick up a worldy for 30m then sound, however the reason we're over stocked with 'good CBs' rather than the 'very good' is rushing in to panic buys for the position...... I think we risk it for 12 months and literally steamroll teams with our potential attack!
The beauty of Danilo is it may allow Mendy to play as an emergency CB, should we need to, however, no 25/30m cb is an upgrade on Mangala, we'd be nuts, especially in this market.... ffs I've heard Gibson being banded about..
Now if we can pick up a worldy for 30m then sound, however the reason we're over stocked with 'good CBs' rather than the 'very good' is rushing in to panic buys for the position...... I think we risk it for 12 months and literally steamroll teams with our potential attack!
I agree with that.
What I don't agree with is Pep putting his faith in Vinny. He has said he can't 'trust' him. Now he can. Huge gamble.
We're going to have serious problems next season if we have to rely on Mangala at some point. He's a woeful player who, like Joe Hart, shines only when we have our backs to the wall for ninety minutes and he has a fight on his hands. Personally, I think his athleticism is the only thing he has going for him and that opposition identify him as the weak link. Often when he plays for us the other team will press and press and press until it reaches Mangala and then they'll just give him as much time as he wants while marking everyone else as they know there's zero danger for them when he's on the ball. His first touch is consistently shocking and how anyone could miss that is beyond me.
Believe it or not, I have a soft spot for him and would love nothing more than to be proven wrong and for him to become a success for us but he'd have to change virtually everything about his game for that to happen.
We're trying to put together a world class squad here and the centre back position is one where we're seriously lacking. An injury to Kompany and we're left with Stones and Otamendi, neither of whom are currently anywhere near world class, with Tosin and Mangala as backup, both of whom are midtable quality at best.
I'll take a lot of stick for this post but I've been reading all the 'give Mangala a chance' comments and honestly can't believe people have that much faith in him.
I'm not sure I agree with that. We were after Mangala for ages, and John Stones was also a very considered buy. Otamendi was a bit more spur of the moment (relatively) I think, but I don't think we've been panic-buying defenders, we just haven't been great at identifying great ones.Now if we can pick up a worldy for 30m then sound, however the reason we're over stocked with 'good CBs' rather than the 'very good' is rushing in to panic buys for the position...... I think we risk it for 12 months and literally steamroll teams with our potential attack!