Thats fine if they can stay fit and adapt respectively.But we have 3 players to take these minutes. Their names are erling haaland, Julian Alvarez and Cole palmer. Together they played like, 500 minutes last season?
From what I’ve seen I’d be shocked if grealish plays cam over foden. Grealish has almost always played as a winger throughout his career and when both foden and grealish play foden is usually the one playing centrally.Are we?
• CB's: Stones, Laporte, Dias, Aké (assuming he stays)
• Fullbacks: Walker, Cancelo, Zinchenko, Cucurella (assuming he arrives)
• Holding mids: Rodri, Phillips
• Attacking mids: Grealish, KDB, Bernardo, Gundogan
• Wingers: Alvarez, Mahrez, Foden, and possibly promoting Palmer?
• Strikers: Haaland, Alvarez
Stones can play right back if Walker/Cancelo gets injured.
Laporte can act leftback if problems at leftback. Same for Aké.
Gundogan can play holding mid if both Rodri and Phillips gets injured or need resting.
Grealish and Bernardo can both play in attacking frontline if we struggle with injuries.
If both Haaland and Alvarez needs a rest, we can play a false nine, which we have done for two years.
Pep has a plan with all of this. I wouldn't be worried. But after Sterling we need to keep our players, and get Cucurella. After that we should be okay.
Adding Serge Gnarby means we could might as well axe Cole Palmer since he would never get any game time.
How do we have a smaller squad than last yearI think it is a big shame losing Sterling, especially on top of Jesus as well.
At the beginning of the summer I saw it as Haaland replacing Aguero and Alvarez replacing Torres. I don’t think we needed to let either go for squad size purposes. But I appreciate that they wanted to leave the club.
As much as Sterling and Jesus are being talked of as squad players they started a hell of a lot of games, Sterling in particular played in as many if not more games than players we will be relying on this season and Gabby started all the big games.
My concern is that I truly believe that we should be aiming to win all 4 trophies this year. We have come close the last couple of years and the reason it all ends is when we get to the week of champions league - league - FA cup semi - champions league and our players have been run in to the ground and are dead on their feet or injured.
The squad size for this season is less than the last two seasons now so I foresee the same situation happening again.
I appreciate I am now moaning about the fact our squad might not be big enough for us to try and win all 4 trophies. Well you can blame Pep for that and his obscene consistency and genius raising my expectations to these levels!!
From what I’ve seen I’d be shocked if grealish plays cam over foden. Grealish has almost always played as a winger throughout his career and when both foden and grealish play foden is usually the one playing centrally.
You’ve put alvarez twice which if anything emphasises the point that the squad is one body short. Whether thats in cm or out wide is subjective but it’s still not enough options for the upcoming condensed season imo.
Dybala is available on a free,although does he play as a winger ?
We could beat at least 60% of the teams in the Prem with MacAtee playing there...Sterling played in 47 games for us last season scoring 17 goals & gabby played in 41 games scoring 13 .
Obviously some of those appearances where as a substitute but that’s a hell of a lot of minutes to replace. Couple that with the World Cup in December and the tight fixture schedule I think it would be absolute madness not to bring in one attacking option.
The squad as it stands is two players too small imo. We need a full back and a cm or winger.
If we sign a winger it allows foden to play as a cam as I believe we are very light there with only gundogan, Bernardo and kdb as the current options.