Looking at AC Milans pre-season, perhaps they will get desperate enough to throw away £7-8m on a player like Osvaldo... (yeah I know, probably dreaming)
You seem quite sure about that! I read somewhere that Feyenoord wanted 10m euro. For that price it would be daft not to give him a go. He is very positive about Koeman who I believe helped him significantly develop his game But my point was, is he being brought in to replace Cork? (Assuming no one stumps up the required fee for Morgan)
Competition for places is a very good thing. It's something we are a tad short on. It's one of reasons why we only made it to 8th last season, good that that was.
Yeah but CM is the one (and only) position where we do have very good competition for places. We have 5 or 6 players there who could all do a job in the PL. If Claasie comes in I would think that would suggest one of them is off.
I don't know if he is or isn't coming, but Beefy seemed pretty sure judging from his post, so this says to me that one of the current ones is leaving, most likely Morgan. If none of our CMs leave then I don't see the need in him coming in as it seems a bit pointless.
We are being linked with some classy players (at very reasonable prices) this "crisis" could be a real opportunity. An audacious operation by Dr Koeman could see us fitted with the transplanted spine of Feyenoord. Elsewhere Rojo, Ings, Van Dijk are exciting prospects. Sell six at an average of £20m, six signed for around £10m a piece, with arguably no drop in quality makes sense to me and quite conceivable.
Oh, if all this somehow comes off it will be the play of the ****ing century. Sell the whole team for 150m and then replace them all, retaining same quality? It would be remarkable. However more likely is we finish lower/mid-table this year.
If we sign Forster, Van Dijk, Rojo/other LB, Ings, Pelle, Tadic, Clasie then that's 7 for the summer still with strong links to De Vrij and rumours of a winger. Can't expect that many can we?
Just be grateful you read this forum and know what is to come. The Twitter meltdown when Chambers leaves will be magnificent.
To be fair if the following happens: Out: Lambert, Lallana, Shaw, Lovren, Chambers, Rodriquez (inj), Schneiderlin In: Pelle, Tadic, Rojo, Van Dijk, De Vrij, Redmond/Gnabry (loan), Ings, Clasie, Forster It would, on paper, be a potential masterstroke. That said it seems unlikely that a total of 9 players will be signed this window. Time will tell I suppose
The players we've been linked with recently have been exactly the type of quality I was hoping for. If we can get 4-5 of them, I'll be very happy with them. Clasie would be a very exciting player, obviously as would De Vrij, Van Dijk, Forster, Rojo etc.
Koeman perhaps has informed the board this is possible. It strikes me a certain amount is being raised, and a modus operandi is being rolled out. Not asset stripping, but asset redressing.
It seems to me that we are replacing like for like in terms of quality (in general could argue about who is better than who), but losing the team cohesion. So calling it a masterstroke is a bit of a stretch. The one positive if this were to happen is that we have replaced like for like as I mentioned, but also made about £50m whilst doing it, which if also invested into the first team at some point in another transfer window could potentially make it a masterstroke.
