This is slightly my concern players going and not being replaced,throw in a couple of injuries and we could be in trouble,I always liked the idea of having cover for key positions expect the unexpected when it comes to injuries..Didn't Pep mention only last week that Haaland has niggles and had to be replaced against Milan. Not a great sign already and with Alvarez leaving we night be playing the false nine sooner rather than later
What questionsI am still trying to figure out what to make of our depth. There are still question marks surrounding a lot of them.
Doku, Savinho, Nunes, McAtee, Bobb, Kovacic, Lewis, Stones, Walker
Exactly, and with the Euro players having very little recovery time injuries are bound to happen quicklyThis is slightly my concern players going and not being replaced,throw in a couple of injuries and we could be in trouble,I always liked the idea of having cover for key positions expect the unexpected when it comes to injuries..
This is slightly my concern players going and not being replaced,throw in a couple of injuries and we could be in trouble,I always liked the idea of having cover for key positions expect the unexpected when it comes to injuries..
I’d like to see a bid put in for Fabian Ruiz
With that said, if we had sold Alvarez a month ago and later signed Savinho, a 20 year old Brazil international that had 11+10 attacking returns in a team that finished third in La Liga, most would have seen him as a decent Alvarez replacement.
So possibly write this year off then?
Have you been in my head :)Come on mate. New, shiny things don't guarantee success - they're just exciting.
We haven't lost anybody who was a stalwart in the side and a guaranteed starter like last Summer with Gundogan and Mahrez. We've just won the league (again) and will have a season next year of players who have another year of Pep's influence under their belts, not to mention younger players maturing a bit more (Erling being captain in USA for example) and hopefully less injuries so we don't go months without KDB/Haaland/Grealish.
We're in a luxury position of being able to improve the side with 1 or 2 incomings as opposed to having to reinvent the wheel and chase something we don't have. This team is a juggernaut, why change it drastically? Introduce a few new faces each year to increase internal competition in certain key areas.
We have 2 brilliant goalkeepers in Eddie and Ortega.
4 capable right backs in Walker, Lewis, Stones and Akanji.
5 capable centre halves in Stones, Akanji, Dias, Ake and Gvardiol.
2 capable left backs in Ake and Gvardiol.
We're stacked in wing positions with Doku, Grealish, Foden, Savio, Bobb, McAtee, Nunes all being able to play there if needed.
Midfield we are fine with Kovacic, Rodri, McAtee, Kev, Nunes, O'Reilly with the likes of Foden, Stones, Gvardiol(?), Stones, Lewis and Grealish(?) being able to play there if needed.
Strikers we are light now with just Haaland. But if he doesn't play then we revert back to the false 9 that won us the league and got us to a CL final in 2020/21 with Foden, Bobb, McAtee, Grealish and Kev all being options to play there.
I saw somebody on another thread yesterday put up that we have a case for two XIs in the squad.
It's fun to have new signings but only really if they hit the ground running with time in the side which I don't think you get with Pep anyway but especially not when we have a core squad of brilliant players all at the top of their games in their positions. A back-up for Rodri is great but he's not going to dislodge him. Same with Haaland. Not only that, we're not going to overpay just because. We wanted Bruno G but he's not worth £100m so we rightly didn't pay it.
Plus, how do we expect players like Bobb, McAtee and O'Reilly to prove their worth and capabilities if they are constantly put further back in rotation behind newer signings? At some point we need to put them to the test and let them loose in the side to show what they can do. They're not star players in the sense that the spotlight will be on them, they can come into a well-oiled machine of a side and slide in without issue or pressure which can only benefit them.
As I keep saying, as long as we have Pep then we're playing with 12 men anyway and he'll be able to figure stuff out if anything majorly goes wrong in the squad with injuries.
I presume we'll leave things as they are unless - Akanji-esque - an opportunity comes up that's too good to turn down. Kimmich maybe? Seems to have quietened down.
If we don't sign anybody and go into the season with what we have plus the integration and willingness to use a few youngsters, I wouldn't be mad at all.
Come on mate. New, shiny things don't guarantee success - they're just exciting.
We haven't lost anybody who was a stalwart in the side and a guaranteed starter like last Summer with Gundogan and Mahrez. We've just won the league (again) and will have a season next year of players who have another year of Pep's influence under their belts, not to mention younger players maturing a bit more (Erling being captain in USA for example) and hopefully less injuries so we don't go months without KDB/Haaland/Grealish.
We're in a luxury position of being able to improve the side with 1 or 2 incomings as opposed to having to reinvent the wheel and chase something we don't have. This team is a juggernaut, why change it drastically? Introduce a few new faces each year to increase internal competition in certain key areas.
We have 2 brilliant goalkeepers in Eddie and Ortega.
4 capable right backs in Walker, Lewis, Stones and Akanji.
5 capable centre halves in Stones, Akanji, Dias, Ake and Gvardiol.
2 capable left backs in Ake and Gvardiol.
We're stacked in wing positions with Doku, Grealish, Foden, Savio, Bobb, McAtee, Nunes all being able to play there if needed.
Midfield we are fine with Kovacic, Rodri, McAtee, Kev, Nunes, O'Reilly with the likes of Foden, Stones, Gvardiol(?), Stones, Lewis and Grealish(?) being able to play there if needed.
Strikers we are light now with just Haaland. But if he doesn't play then we revert back to the false 9 that won us the league and got us to a CL final in 2020/21 with Foden, Bobb, McAtee, Grealish and Kev all being options to play there.
I saw somebody on another thread yesterday put up that we have a case for two XIs in the squad.
It's fun to have new signings but only really if they hit the ground running with time in the side which I don't think you get with Pep anyway but especially not when we have a core squad of brilliant players all at the top of their games in their positions. A back-up for Rodri is great but he's not going to dislodge him. Same with Haaland. Not only that, we're not going to overpay just because. We wanted Bruno G but he's not worth £100m so we rightly didn't pay it.
Plus, how do we expect players like Bobb, McAtee and O'Reilly to prove their worth and capabilities if they are constantly put further back in rotation behind newer signings? At some point we need to put them to the test and let them loose in the side to show what they can do. They're not star players in the sense that the spotlight will be on them, they can come into a well-oiled machine of a side and slide in without issue or pressure which can only benefit them.
As I keep saying, as long as we have Pep then we're playing with 12 men anyway and he'll be able to figure stuff out if anything majorly goes wrong in the squad with injuries.
I presume we'll leave things as they are unless - Akanji-esque - an opportunity comes up that's too good to turn down. Kimmich maybe? Seems to have quietened down.
If we don't sign anybody and go into the season with what we have plus the integration and willingness to use a few youngsters, I wouldn't be mad at all.