Rebuilding the Squad

[trevorriley]

it looks like we have had another season of poor or wrong signings, why are we back to the same team that couldnt perform last season. We didnt invest in areas where we are weak. All we have done is strengthen the bench, loan players & physio bed.

 

[ADegenerate]

it looks like we have had another season of poor or wrong signings, why are we back to the same team that couldnt perform last season. We didnt invest in areas where we are weak. All we have done is strengthen the bench, loan players & physio bed.

I'm guessing a little bit of everything went wrong. The biggest probably being Laporte dicking us over. Kompany, Otamendi, Stones, and Laporte would have been the right combo of now/future for three at the back and rolling the dice with AK, BS, GC, and Zaba for one more year.

Sane/Nolito/Jesus was sensible enough at the attacking end.

I can understand why we only landed Gundogan in the midfield. We had to sell Yaya, nasri, or fernando to move somebody in and I'm sure the combo of finding what we wanted and selling Yaya/Nasri/Fernando was always going to be a long shot.

The fullback situation was probably the same as the midfield. I'd rather we held out for WC fullbacks (Bellerin, Sandro, etc) and rolled the dice with what we had rather than settle for third or fourth options.

It's a complete cluster fuck. We'll need another two or three windows like the someone above mentioned. Depressing really. The agitating part is that there were so many links that made great sense such as Pogba, Kante, Peres, and Bonucci.

 

[Sheikh rattle and roll]

The funny thing with transfers though is we may have been in for those players who said no thanks I'm going elsewhere

 

[masterwig]

Key is the core.

When we won the two PL titles we had a clear core of players. Hart, Kompany, Toure, Silva, Aguero. You could maybe add Zabba to that too. While we made changes to the team elsewhere those players played nearly every game save for injury/suspension/being rested occasionally.

Have we effectively replaced any of those players?

Hart definitely not.
Kompany not yet but I have hopes for Stones long term.
Toure definitely not.
Silva is still here but powers on the wane. Possibly argue De Bruyne as a replacement for him.
Aguero is still here and doesn't need a replacement (in this case it's the secondary player ie Dzeko/Negredo who needs a replacement).
And if we do count Zabba again he hasn't been replaced.

So at best we have successfully replaced one out of five of our key players. In some cases we signed the wrong players (Mangala) in others I don't think we've even managed to make a signing with that stature in mind.

Seems to me we've spent four years signing secondary players. The only players you could make a case for are Fernandinho and De Bruyne. Stones has potential. Jesus is an unknown quantity.

If you look at all the other top clubs and pick out their five top players of 2012 and current core, you'll see huge turnover compared to us.

 

[BigOscar]

I think we're just in the last year of relying on the old guard, while the new signings become the new core of the team for next year. If we build the core of the team around Stones, Gundogan, De Bruyne, Sterling, Sane/Jesus, Aguero then we only need to fill in the gaps, but they are still bedding in so we are still to reliant on the old core who clearly aren't up to being relied on any more. A couple of young energetic fullbacks, a new holding midfielder who can play the ball and maybe another centerback and we're pretty much there, especially if we start to utilise our academy for the fringe spots.

At the moment we are reminiscent of the team Guardiola took over at Barca, in need of letting the Ronaldinho/Deco/Belletti/Zambrotta's go to let the other players take the reigns.