Winter update.
We just signed two well known players in England.
First of, Marcus Edwards, formerly of Spurs and England's youth teams, has joined the club after 3 great seasons at Vitória SC, a team that fights for european places here in Portugal. Loads of talent, technically brilliant but needs to improve off the ball. However his dribbling ability and quickness was sorely lacking as an option off the bench to give some extra dazzle and spark. He was even mentioned to join some Premier League clubs for 20/25M a couple years ago (Leeds and your red rivals I belive) but Vitória declined and his level dropped a bit (the club is also very unstable and coaches didn't know what to do with him). The other one was Islam Slimani, who played here for 3 seasons before being sold to Leicester in 2016 for 35 million euros. His career has fizzled out a bit and despite a great half season in Monaco, he has been used sparingly at Lyon. He will provide aerial threat and a dangerous physical presence in the box as a striker. The team desperately needed more fire power and better attacking depth and if Edwards progresses and Slimani can still deliver half of what he could a couple years ago, they will be great additions. Jovane, a talented but inconsisten and injury ridden winger, has gone to Lazio and Tiago Tomás, a 19 year old striker who played a key part in the team last year, left for Stuttgard on loan looking for more minutes and experience.
In terms of the team, we had a bit of rough patch (injury problems in a small squad and poor finishing were bound to catch up someday) with 2 unexpected losses almost back to back in the league which left us 6 points behind Porto, but we just won another league cup (4th league cup in 5 years) against Benfica while absolutely dominating them only giving up a shot on target the whole game. The dip in form and especially in confidence (the two losses were completely unforced with a lot of errors playing out from the back, circa Man City in the first Pep season) is hopefully over with another trophy (the 4th in the last 5 available domestic trophies). Young players have been feeling the effects of playing every 3 days at this competitive stage, but growing pains. So far this year: one supercup, one league cup, semis in the cup, reached the knockout stage in the Champions League and still fighting for the league while also looking set to be at least second which is massive here because it means direct acess for the UCL.
See you soon!