I like all points you made today! 100% true. Still think we need MGW for pace in midfield and at least 2 of Kovacic / Gundogan and Bernardo gone.
The perfect move would be to sell 2 CB and 2 CM for 2 HG players in MGW and Livramento.
Next session the club can look at Wharton if Gonzalez flops.
The fact that people insist on experience when the same experience barely helped us since they were injured or completely out of form is troublesome.
Including KDB, there are 8 players coming to the end of their contracts, or who have no future here who we can feasibly jettison this summer. This doesn't include a number of older EDS players who it's deemed won't make it here.
The nominal fees brought in & the wages saved for them alone would allow us to vastly reduce the squad & buy Livramento & MGW.
HOWEVER, if we're to make a serious assault on every competition we play in, I'd still prefer us to have a bigger squad & to adequately rotate & rest players throughout the gruelling season ahead.
If as Pep keeps complaining, players are being asked to play too much, his small squad philosophy makes little sense when added to the increased physicality of today's game.
The FA, PL, UEFA & FIFA keep increasing the amount of games players are made to perform in, but yet they put limitations on squad sizes. Pep doesn't like to utilise the squad size to the extent that we're allowed, but he can't have it both ways with his preferred small squad playing more games.
Agreed, there's no substitute for experience, however, that experience is of little use to us if those players spend the majority of the season in the treatment room.
As we saw last season, it did very little to help us, as we scraped finishing a disappointing 3rd, so in respect to succession planning, in for a penny, in for a pound. Let's make the necessary changes this summer & spend next season gelling the new, younger more vibrant squad together.
You never know, we may just win something along the way to being a more coherent squad for 2026/27.