It has to be said that Poch didn't really make glamourous signings either - and when he did, that signing gets called "Fat" by everyone
Sounds like we might be opening talks with Hugo over a new deal. Current one expires in 2022. Second half of the season he got back to some excellent form, hopefully he’s caught a second wind and continues that for the foreseeable future as he had a couple years of bad **** ups.
It's hilarious how a couple of days ago Lucas de Vega was an unknown player in Barca's youth system with a season in the Spanish third tier to his name, but once that got churnalised a bit he's now a wonderkid with an £89m release clause...
Apparently Spurs bid £2million but Barca want £3.5million up front with another £3.5million in add ons too
Is he really not managing his weight, so it is exacerbating old/new injuries ?? If so, I expect for the wages they are paid to do that as an absolute minimum once the physio staff tell him what the weight range should be,
This Real Madrid left back on offer for 25 mill He seems to have everything everyone wants and 25 mill doesn’t seem like much how ‘skint’ are we?
Ali Gold reckons LB is so far down the priority list this summer, we like the player but not worth jeopardising more important business to bring him in. And pretty skint, it seems. Plus we’re now one out one in for non-HG players.
Davies is our first-choice LB, Sessegnon's being trialled there, and we're also looking at bringing through Cirkin, so we have options there Back in January it was pretty clear what our team needed 1.) Some bite in midfield, as we simply couldn't control games 2.) An RB who can operate in the free role so is reliable defensively and has end product offensively 3.) Cover up front 4.) Better HG/non-HG balance On the other hand, LB and GK are bottom of our list of priorities, so throwing £25m at a player who isn't necessary is a bad decision when that money needs to be spent elsewhere Obviously there's times where this line of thinking does need to be addressed, for example at the time plenty of people were happy to stick with Danny Rose and pass on Andy Robertson but retrospect has shown that if we spent the £8m while cashing in on Rose we'd have been in a much better position in the past couple of seasons than we are now (even if that would've hit us in the HG/CG quotas short-term) but in cases like that the gamble is £8m rather than £25m
I worked out we could afford a net spend of around £125m based on last seasons numbers adjusted for the new stadium. But we will be at least 50m down on stadium income and about the same on EL v CL so I reckon we should expect to see less than 25m as net spend.
For me every transfer window should be judged on whether you come out of it stronger than you went in. The last few years we haven't been because we failed to address the ball winning midfielder and a forward. Now that has been corrected so if we get a forward then we will have had a good window...if we don't it will not be.
I think that every summer transfer window should be judged on whether the squad is complete, competitive and free of dross. We failed that test badly last year.
Think that is very difficult because for example, last season players we wanted out refused to go. If we had bought a striker we may have rescued our season. You can't complete a squad in one window without either having a great squad at that time or a **** load of money...not a dig at chelsea btw. If you address the glaring weaknesses (as we have with Doherty and Hojbjerg) but not yet with a striker then the window has been a good one for me. The dross aspect is an issue in different ways. 1. No one at the club expected N'dombele to be so poor. 2. Rose (and Eriksen) should have been told to find a club last summer as they would not be given squad numbers. I was not expecting great things from Jose but he has dealt with Rose well, handled the Eriksen situation as well as possible and has been clear in his transfer targets so far. He was decisive in getting Skipp and Parrott experience on loan. If a striker comes in I will think its been the first window since the summer of 2016 where we have tried to address our gaps in the team and overall squad. But with no striker I think this window will have been adequate at best.
I agree but would be more harsh in my assessment if we don’t bring in a striker. It’s been the glaring weakness - we could have managed with Aurier at RB and a youngster as 3rd keeper if need be, hell we could probably even have managed without adding a ball winner in midfield, though that has hampered us hugely. The striker is and has been for me the #1 priority. As much as we’ve made good moves so far if we don’t get backup for Kane this window then we have dropped a huge bollock.
