Trippier would still have had a slow motion trainwreck of a season even if we signed Grealish last summer
But would we have seen Sissoko evolve into a Goat? Perhaps not. Grealish next to Dier would've been the standard affair. Sissoko, the once in a generation talent, would have forever remained an unpolished diamond.
Sissoko is also the reason I believe the Gedson Fernandes rumours have legs: if he were to sign, Sissoko would be the first-choice bulldozer as Fernandes gets acclimatised to the Premier League and what Poch requires, with Fernandes growing into the team in time for the post-Christmas glut of games That's certainly something we should have considered last summer as it was obvious Dembele didn't have much left in him, but we made a complete bollocks of that
Rabiot Watch ...oh for doublefuck's sake Yup, once again we're being linked with him, with CalcioMercato reporting we're willing to break our wage structure to nab him from under Juventus' noses. Here's a thought: let Juventus have him, and use those wages on a player who doesn't look like he'll be a walking arseache for the duration of his stint with us Portugeezer of the Day Surprisingly it isn't a Benfica player, but Porto B centre back Diogo Queiros, who just so happens to have a £21.5m release clause and a complete lack of Jorge Mendes as an agent - although we're supposedly offering £12m due to the small issue of him being in Porto's B-team which you'd think is the point where asking for £20m+ would get silly considering we'd be taking one hell of a punt
A year on from last summer and I'm in two minds about this one. He didn't have a good season by any stretch of the imagination (although playing in a disjointed team under 3 managers couldn't have helped). And I'm not at all worried about our left flank anymore. Rose genuinely looks like he's almost back to his best and Davies is a very solid option. The other flank needs much more urgent attention.
Happy for him to join, though seen prices of £35m, he only has a year left and despite still being very young and talented, he didn't exactly set the Prem alight this season - though no one at Fulham did. £20m-£25m would be a fair price. Wouldn't mind a cheeky bid for Seri too, might be available for even less than what Fulham paid. Failed miserably this season but he was being chased by Europe's elite a little over a year ago, he hasn't just lost the ability that made him one of Ligue 1's best players.
Sessegnon ticks plenty of boxes for me: he's the pacy left winger with a French-sounding name that Poch likes to sign - but, crucially, as he's U21 and will count as HG if he's still with us in a few years he allows us to consider options in other positions that aren't hamstrung by our non-HG quota ...providing we manage to offload GKN in the summer, obviously Add to that Son definitely needs an understudy, something he literally doesn't have at the moment with GKN, Georgiou and Shashoua all out on loan, and Sessegnon would be a better option than GKN
Yes the HG element is important. Wages wouldn't be an issue either and if we were signing him to end his days as a LB once and for all and turn him into a wide attacker, I'd be all for it.
I've seen this bizarre attitude among Reddit posters that we shouldn't be signing depth, we should be signing players better than what we have to make the current first team player the depth option...somehow failing to consider that signing an improvement for basically every member of the first team who isn't a right back would require a significant transfer fee, or that we'd see our wage bill balloon overnight There are positions where we obviously need a player ready to go once next season starts, with central midfield and right back being the key areas (and most likely centre back too), yet on the other hand we also need to be looking at players who may not be first choice at the start of the season but will play a key role late in the season and beyond, which is what Sessegnon could well be (as could a few other players we're linked with, such as Gedson Fernandes and Robert Skov)
That is what I was trying to say, perhaps I didn't make myself clear, he is better as a back up/potential player than we already have.
When Spurs are financially doped like a Sugga Daddy FC, then by all means do the above. Meanwhile back on planet Earth ...
That reminds me, apparently Danilo has agreed to leave The Sheikh Mansour Team to join Inter I wonder if they would be interested in an international right back with Premier League experience who also has experience of winning titles with a team who only became successful after they activated the money cheat? Because if so, there's suggestions that we're willing to listen to offers for Aurier this summer... I wasn't aiming the comment at you, more how the Reddit generation of football fans don't seem to get it - probably because a vast percentage of them are from the side of the Atlantic that invented spray-on cheese
Going back to Sessegnon for a moment, it is worth pointing out that in spite of Fulham's general haplessness this season he's still racked up six assists in the league, so while he may not have been scoring for fun like he was last season in the Championship, he still has an end product in the attacking third For context, here's a few other players to rack up six assists in the league this season: David Silva, Son Heung-min, Roberto Firminho, Willian, Aaron Ramsey, Abdoulaye Doucoure
The only issue for Sessegnon is his transfer fee, as Fulham will want to get a bidding war going. Levy will have to decide what the combo of age + potential + HG status warrants.
The fee that's been going around for the last few weeks is £25m, although I'm going to assume that Fulham expect the vast majority of that upfront (which would explain why there's been suggestions we'd want his twin brother Steven as part of the deal)
Perhaps they simply agree with me that even our back up players can't be improved upon without spending £30m a piece so it's better to try to improve the best XI by signing half as many £60m players. Whether we need any more CM players depends on whether Dier and Wanyama recover to anywhere near the players they looked like two seasons ago AND how good Winks really is.
I think that there are a couple of positions in our full-strength first eleven that we can realisitically improve, but quite a lot beyond that. A Dembele replacement and a right-back are the glaring openings. A holding midfielder or a deep-lying playmaker are probably next. Back up, though? Plenty of possibilities with striker being an ongoing and obvious problem. I'd be happy with Sessegnon and a few similar signings, as long as we address the midfield as a priority.
