Yeah plus one of Dier or Sanchez, neither of whom are HG. Possibly even one of GLC or Tanguy too, because I’m not sure where they fit in if we go 3 at the back.
If we really are looking at Kounde & Andersen, both of Dier & Sanchez Congrats, Toby, you justified your remaining at the club
I’m not sold on Kounde to be honest, he’d reportedly command a large fee and I’m not sure he’s physically up to the PL. I know there’s been a few very good CBs under 6ft over the years but his lack of height makes me nervous for the price. The Japanese lad we’ve been strongly linked with from Bologna looks interesting. If we signed him and Andersen then we’d have one ready to come in and start, and Tomiyasu ready to step up (hopefully) after a year acclimatising to the PL. I imagine Toby will be off next summer if we make the right additions, rather than clinging on and losing him on a free.
I'd happily shift both of the CBs if we do indeed bring two in and if decent offers came in for the two CMs I'd take them too and reinvest their funds in one or two replacements. Neither player has done it here and I don't want to risk a third season of relying on them to be our creators. I'd rather give Dele another chance than persist with those two and you lot know my thoughts on Dele, lol. Repeating myself a bit here as I've said it a good few times already but I really do hope there's a cull this window. It's an opportune time now that we're not in EL or CL. The ECL will be a perfect platform to bed in a load of younger players alongside a few first team squad players to help replenish and revitalise things, I'll be bitterly disappointed if we've not sold at least a solid 6 players by the end of the window, preferably around 8-9 though.
Yeah, just counting it out: Aurier - as good as said he wants to leave Sissoko - was quoted saying he was ready to think about his future after the Euros, so hopefully we can help him do that Winks - should be surplus to requirements now we have Skipp coming through, and as a HG England international shouldn’t have a problem finding a club in the PL as long as he’s not picky and Levy doesn’t price him out Lamela - early reports had interest from Italy for him, let’s see Chucking at least one CB out of Dier and Sanchez, then also getting rid of at least one of Dele, GLC and Tanguy gets us to 6 out. Picked those 3 as I don’t see where Nuno plays them unless he decides on a 433/4231. But I think most of the squad suits 3 at the back quite well. Of course this all depends on finding buyers and getting replacements that Nuno and Paratici think will do better than the incumbents.
The thing is, if any part of our team needs a cull, it's the defence Aurier Dier Sanchez After last season, I can't think of many people who are willing to see Dier or Aurier in our starting lineup outside of early preseason games
If in a two I'd somewhat agree with you as the Prem is far more physical than La Liga and CBs generally need to be above 6ft over here as an unwritten rule. In a three though, I actually think he'd be great, he'd be the middle CB for me and the one we'd label as the "stopper", where he'd press a bit further up than the other two due to his mobility. At £45m though I just don't see us spending that on a single player this window unless it's with any potential Kane money. As for Toby, I think he'll leave on a free once his deal ends in a couple seasons, he doesn't have much value now and the wages he's on means teams won't likely want to match that whilst he has time on his deal.
The thing with £45m is (in theory...) we can see where it's coming from We have £15m in the bank for Foyth (although that's likely going on Tomiyasu) Aurier, Sissoko and Lamela are in the last years of their contracts so we can ballpark £20-30m Sanchez will likely raise £20m on his own given the time left on his contract Deadwood alone can cover Kounde...or could bring in Andersen and one of Sabitzer or Aouar
For me there's "must sells", "should sells" and "if right offer arrives, sell" Musts - Aurier, Sanchez, Winks, Sissoko, Lamela Should - Dier, Ndombele and/ or Lo Celso Right offer - Bergwijn, Davies (on the basis Sess stays, though Davies could be good in a back three), Dele I think the midfield is a close second. Ndombele, Lo Celso and Dele don't cut it/ don't cut it any more, whilst Winks and Sissoko are just absolute turd. A non-overused Hojbjerg is the only CM that does his job adequately for me. Of the three "creative" players I'd probably prefer to keep Dele (don't worry, even I'm surprised as saying that!), primarily because he's HG and also because he's probably got one last credit in his account to buy him one more chance here. Skipp coming back will be a boost, then one or two CM additions if we can shift three or four of the others would be pretty ideal for me.
I see what you mean about a stopper but I’d worry about him getting targeted with aerial balls and that getting exploited. I also think that Rodon has just had a very good Euros playing in the middle of a back 3 and spending that kind of money on a player to do the same thing, who also has risks about adapting to England/the PL and his physical attributes might be silly. As hbic says, even if we can make the fee up by trimming deadwood, I’d rather see it invested in a player like Andersen (who knows the league) and put towards someone like Sabitzer, if he’s still a target.
The thing with out defence is it's easy to rebuild, as we can dump three non-HG players in Aurier, Dier & Sanchez and either replace them with three different non-HG players (i.e. Tomiyasu, Andersen, Kounde...and, would you Adam & Eve it, Skriniar's been linked again) or potentially rejig the balance with a HG player or two who's been linked such as Aaron or Coady Midfield is where things get difficult, because while Ndombele is a player who can be sold and bring in £30-40m to spend elsewhere (and you get the feeling I'm going to keep suggesting this...) the issue is that Winks and Dele make things more than a little complicated as they're propping up our dismal HG numbers for at least another year until Skipp and Clarke graduate from being counted as U21 (while Parrott and White will take even longer, and then there's Scarlett and Devine who will qualify as senior in time for the 2024 World Cup...), although the good news is Alfie Whiteman counts as a senior player now so we can move on Carter-Vickers sooner rather than later Would've been nice if we had buyback clauses for Madueke or Edwards, eh?
With two other CBs alongside him I'm not worried about his potential lack of aerial threat - do we even know if he's good in the air or not? May have the Moura gene of being able to jump stupidly high for his height, lol. I've not seen him enough to know if Ashley Barnes is his worst nightmare or he's comfortable with that sort of height/ physical player. I've got a bad feeling Sabitzer will go elsewhere. Would love to be wrong but I think there'll be a bidding war for him and Spurs don't generally like entering those.
Wouldn’t you be concerned about that pulling the other CBs out of position? Neither of our prospective DMs (Højbjerg/Skipp) are exactly dominant in the air either so I’d be worried he was isolated and the knock on effects of that.
Does anyone obsess about the height of their strikers, you know, the ones that are up against giant Centre Backs?
Winks leaving doesn't bother me (bet that's a surprise to most ), I said the other day I think we can work round the potential sticky point of CG/ HG. Neither featured prominently last season and barely contributed bar a couple worldies in Europa. In the ECL, we'll have a lot of younger players that can cover Winks' loss albeit they won't officially count as CG as they won't need to be registered but if there's a choice of £20m for Winks and no immediate CG replacement or keeping Winks, I'm choosing the former all day long. We won't miss his contribution, so take the money and look to use it where possible. As I said above I'd give Dele another chance over Ndombele and/ or Lo Celso if that became a choice. The latter two I just can't see coming good and so I'd rather try and make £60m-£70m from their sales to fund moves for others. I'd like to think we'll be targetting one or two HG players after Paratici is done raiding Serie A, Aarons would be most welcome. I'm still pretty pissed about the Madueke and Edwards departures, lol.
Not really to be honest. That's also me assuming he'd need to pull others out of position too, he may cope just fine with aerial balls. Albeit not in the Prem but his lack of height hasn't seemingly held him back thus far, he's played in Ligue 1 and La Liga and seemingly done well, not forgetting his success in 19/20 in Europa, broken into the French squad too. Think Madrid have also been linked with him as a Ramos replacement. As I said though, I don't really see this one happening due to the costs involved. I don't think we've got £45m-ish to spend on a single player this window, unless Kane does go.
I'll up your 8 out and go for 10 out. No, hang on let's make it 12. After all, no team has ever had any problems integrating a large number of new players at the same time. The other thing we know is that players playing for other clubs, and particularly in different leagues, are always better than players at our club with PL experience.
Surely our HG numbers don't matter. It's the limit of 17 non HG that's the limiting feature. We don't need 25 over 21 players in the squad because we've got many U21 players who might play a decent number of games. Skipp, White, Sessegnon, Devine, Parrott, Clarke and Scarlett. So we can sell as many HG players as we like but we can only buy one more non-HG players than the number of non-HG players we sell as we already have 16. However some of those count as HG for the PL so we've got more flexibility than that.
