Erm…..Sadio Mane came from the Austrian league, Pelle and Tadic from the Dutch league. Van Dijk from Scotland. All not the best leagues.
Juanmi is actually a pretty okay player. He had three decent seasons for Real Sociedad, then they just sold him to Real Betis for more than we paid originally. But when he was here, he never got a single start and hardly ever played and we sold him for dirt cheap and took a big monetary loss... then struggled to find a striker worth a piss for several years. So maybe the problem wasn't Juanmi, but us?
Eredivisie is probably comparable to the Portuguese league, with both a step below Ligue 1, which is itself a couple steps below the big four. Average top half Eredivisie side would probably slot in to the Championship (though as the average player in Holland seems to be 13 years old, they might take a beating). Fun to watch and filled with talent, just not an overabundance of finished products outside the top few.
The real weird one for me is not that we are trying to find these gems, it's that we are doing it at the expense of the rest of the squad. Let's face it, why on earth did we sign Djenepo when it's obvious our problems are at the back? Very strange decision
Not sure about that. If Redmond had gotten injured last season then we'd have been screwed. We needed another playmaker more than a CB, as mad as that sounds.
I guess it's a game of opinions. For me, we need to build a solid spine to the team, before gambling on flair players. Unless Djenepo is the next Ronaldo, we should have kept sims and signed a centre back that can actually play football, and has experience and leadership qualities.
We certainly had more quality depth with forward players. But we have actually signed a CB so I think we should wait to see how good Danso actually is
It's a lot to ask of a 20 year old. In an ideal world, I would have liked Danso plus another more experienced CB. With the money spent on Djenepo that isn't that unrealistic either.
If they're world-class, they will have left as teens, if they're great, by 24, anyone left in the league after that probably isn't going to play at the top level.
Pelle was in serie A long before, and Tadic left at 24. both fit into the range I've , so what is your point? That they're actually world-class?
Not really. We scored 0 goals. And we never looked particularly threatening. We would not be so mad about the defense had we lost 1-0 instead of 3-0, but 1-0 is still a loss. Also, keep in mind that Danso might actually be quite good, but there was no way he could have played on Saturday as he'd just got here. Our defense was bad because we played the same guys as last year, minus an important piece in Hojbjerg. Whereas our attack was bad even though we got at least one of our signings into the squad. Which isn't to point fingers at Adams. I'm just saying, we needed help on attack as much as we did on defense.
I look at it like this: goals keep you in the league, defences get you Europe or the title. Teams that are porous but score goals stay up but those that don't score much rarely survive in the league.