Will play #25 shirt. Completely different roles on the field and types of player, but if he turns out to be anywhere near as effective and talented as Franco, happy days are coming ! We've been very lucky down the years with holding "mids"....Deschamps, Makelele and Kante, let's hope we have another gem on our hands !!!
He looks to be exactly what we need in midfield. We sure stuffed up the negotiation, but got our man. Lets all hope it works out for everyone.
If he is half as good as his hype then we made a good signing. Albeit not a cheap one! But Cucurella and Potter have burnt me on promising, overpriced additions from Brighton, so I am a little suspect. We will see. For sure we are lacking something in midfield. Enzo has the dynamism and Gallagher has the plucky workhorse everyman qualities, but we needed a no nonsense **** kicker who will break down opposition attacks and control the midfield for us, and Caicedo is being billed as the perfect man for the role. Hopefully we can get rid of Ziyech, Lukaku and Hudson-Odoi and truly lighten up our squad and our wage bill. Ziyech looks on his way to Turkey and I think Hudson-Odoi will have takers in the lower end of the PL, like West Ham, Everton and Forest. We just need to find a home for Bi-polar Romelu.
Ziyech landed Istanbul, if he passes medical he will sign Galatasary. But Galatasaray did not make an announcement yet like they did Icardi or Zaha when player is on plane. So that IF is still a big one.
Hate the idea of selling Lewis Hall and Trevoh Chalobah, 2 players who have never let us down. Hall has proven better than Cuccurella and Chalobah better than Fofana. I dont get it.
The way FFP operates you get more FFP credit for selling a home grown player because its 100% profit. Cucurella and Fofana cost us £130m between the two of them. We were absolute morons to pay that. Also they are part of the reason Mount left. He wins a CL title with Chelsea and is on 60 grand a week and then sees us buy complete no marks like those two and they immediately get 180k a week contracts.
Caicedo had an absolute stinker 1st up, but after stirring on his bum for 3 months while we stuffed up his purchase, he's not to blame. More worrying was the sloppy defending from all our back 4 or 3 or whatever we played. Why Chalobah isn't playing is interesting. Fofana is out injured and our new under 20 year olds were getting in each others way, not too encouraging. Individually they might be excellent but need fitting in more slowly and given time to adapt. With Reece James out for a month, we look seriously underdone in experience in defence for me. Poch obviously trying to give the kids a go, which I'm all for, but needs to be a touch more pragmatic. Then there's the problem of 50 visits to West Hams' area and no goals. Shades of last year and the year before. And what did we do? Buy a proper experienced and highly rated striker ?? No. Bought a young striker with potential who desperately needs our midfield to function. He'll get that, but not until it settles in, next few games. Sterling finally looked like he'd shaken off the effects of the Mogodon he must have been on last year, which is a plus. Another knee injury to go with our others we could have done without. So what to make of it all? Still need goalscorers, defence needs tweaking , creating scoring opportunities not a big problem. Plenty of talent on show, but it might well take longer than we hoped to start worrying the likes of City.
Couldn’t have gone much worse could it but once he’s fit he’ll be so important to how we play and it’ll free up Fernandez more too.
Better from Caicedo ,and an upstep from the Team. Sterling especially has silenced my previous criticism , and if he keeps going it's a big bonus. We still looked scratchy and far from where we need to be, our back to front play was disjointed, but that should come with time. Good to see Jackson score, but we are still desperate for a striker with some power and directness. Poch has a big job sorting his best team out, so not expecting really dramatic improvements, just step by step until he gets that done.Work in progress definitely heading in the right direction.
I’d be disappointed if we signed a striker, I really like Jackson. Not sure he’ll ever get 20 goals a season but he contributes an awful lot and makes great runs. I wouldn’t want us to spend big money on someone and he become the impact player. We do need someone who can play in the forward positions though, can’t believe how weak our bench was on Friday. Agree on Sterling though, looks a different player, might be down to instructions but he just seems to be more interested than last season when he hardly put in any effort at all!
