It's Quiet thread 14 - 'do one' edition

[The slaughtered lamb]

Case in point. Skriniar is a fucking robot and Inter have been open to selling him for two years now. He is shite.

Buy a proper, energetic midfielder.

I'd even look again at Denayer for centre-back, we still have an option on him. He's right footed, can also play on the left side of a two, very good in the air and homegrown.

Far too many people decided to write him off after he was sent for hot-dogs playing against Wales when he got turned for the goal at the Euros.

Probably get him for £40m like Ake plus our sell-on discount.

I wonder if we’d consider moving Rodri to CB and signing that energetic midfielder you speak of? I think he played there season before last at Crystal Palace and did a decent job - good footballer, big enough, just a bit slow on the turn.

I doubt Pep would consider it and to be fair, when you start talking about positional changes for a player it’s an admission of failure. But I would say the solution at CB could be in plain sight, as is our need for that midfielder.

 

[Del_Bosque]

Worrying we haven’t been linked with a left back very strongly

would love to see us get Alaba

would be able to play midfield as well

don’t think we’ll get him though

can see us making a late panic move for Danny Rose

 

[Neville Kneville]

Agree that we have struggled with quality across the back 4 for a long time. But what I cant stand is the buy buy buy approach. When we buy a player its a 5 year deal on top wages - the kind only 5 or 10 clubs would be able to match. So when they dont turn out to be good we are stuck with them unless we pay them off. I'd rather go a season with Tosin as 4th choice than end up with 5 or 6 top earning older CBs - further down the road they get even older and injured and we can very quickly turn into a squad of dead wood.

We have Ake who I really like, him and Laporte could be the two. We should just go with it and go into the market again next year if it doesn't work out - by that time the options and prices will be different and possibly better.

Imo, if we think Tosin is any good, he should be introduced as 5th choice during the season, then if he really is good, we sell off one of the 4 & use him. Sandler looks better to me but he's not club trained.

 

[waspish]

Worrying we haven’t been linked with a left back very strongly

would love to see us get Alaba

would be able to play midfield as well

don’t think we’ll get him though

can see us making a late panic move for Danny Rose

We don’t need a left back we have 3

 

[OrigamiNinja]

There's still a lot of buying and selling to do for all teams, Chelsea are probably ahead of us, every other team probably behind us in being set for next season. It'll be fine.Regardless your original point that funds for a centre back were spent on Ake has no foundation as we are obviously still looking at around £65-70 mill budget as we always have been.

It stands because I want us to sign our number 1 CB target, no matter the cost. Don't identify him, chase him all summer, only to then penny-pinch for the sake of a few £m. If we spent £40m on Ake and still have £70m available for another, that's a £110m budget (not suggesting we pay £110m for him) that could have been used to secure Koulibaly (or next best) but also secure him a month ago.

In my opinion, buy your 1st choice 1st and then see what funds you have remaining for the back up. Instead we keep throwing these £40m Hail Marys on bang-average/back up players that we hope and pray can step up to the mark. Im sure someone intelligent once said something about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

 

[cjn]

I'm not sure what the Stones chat is all about. He was always going to stick around once Garcia said he wasn't renewing. Is anyone even advocating that we sell him? Giving him another go this year is the smart and obvious thing to do.

That said, the idea of giving him another contract to protect our investment is actually absurd, we definitely, definitely should not do that. Even is he's the best centerback in the world this season there's no one outbidding us on contract terms next summer when he has a year left. There's no risk at all in letting him play on the current deal.

Lastly though, we still need to sign another centerback, even if it isn't Koulibaly. "Do we even have any scouts" is an overused trope on here, but really, we have 60 or 70 million to spend, and the only centerbacks in the world we can find worth pursuing is either a guy who plays for Napoli or a 27 year old with one season of top level experience and a 70m release clause? This is a year after the only one we could find was Harry Maguire. This is a crazy problem to have.

 

[Chi-town blues]

Is there a back clause on Denayer ?

 

[OrigamiNinja]

I'm not sure what the Stones chat is all about. He was always going to stick around once Garcia said he wasn't renewing. Is anyone even advocating that we sell him? Giving him another go this year is the smart and obvious thing to do.

That said, the idea of giving him another contract to protect our investment is actually absurd, we definitely, definitely should not do that. Even is he's the best centerback in the world this season there's no one outbidding us on contract terms next summer when he has a year left. There's no risk at all in letting him play on the current deal.

Lastly though, we still need to sign another centerback, even if it isn't Koulibaly. "Do we even have any scouts" is an overused trope on here, but really, we have 60 or 70 million to spend, and the only centerbacks in the world we can find worth pursuing is either a guy who plays for Napoli or a 27 year old with one season of top level experience and a 70m release clause? This is a year after the only one we could find was Harry Maguire. This is a crazy problem to have.

Agreed.

The guy cost us £50m and is probably on £100k+ pw. We are 4 years down the line and he has done nothing to repay any of it. We are not protecting any investment by offering him a new deal, we are simply throwing away good money after bad. Selling him for £20m now and saving £5m+ per annum on his wages, is far more preferable to extending his contract.

 

[jimbopm]

Agreed.

The guy cost us £50m and is probably on £100k+ pw. We are 4 years down the line and he has done nothing to repay any of it. We are not protecting any investment by offering him a new deal, we are simply throwing away good money after bad. Selling him for £20m now and saving £5m+ per annum on his wages, is far more preferably to extending his contract.

 

[LongsightM13]

View attachment 2207

To be fair he was only covering for his own catastrophic fuck up in twatting the ball against Ederson’s head when he was caught in a blind panic after losing his man