I wouldn’t mind Phil Jones, seems like he’s available on the cheap. Either he or Cahill would be a perfect signing imo, we need experience and leadership at the back, without breaking the bank.
Would Jones be on the cheap? Isn’t he on a 100k a week contract. He won’t want too much of a drop but his injury record means we can’t really do that And that is not to mention any kind of absurd transfer or loan fee United may want
I think Cahill would be a decent stopgap for a year! Add invaluable experience to the younger recruits and will be peanuts in reality. But his resale value is zero so j can't see the club within their business model doing it.. hope to be proved wrong as we need a leader above all else.
Why does he resale being zero matter if his fee is zero? I guess is depends on wages and signing on fee. But he doesn’t see to have had offers yet that said I expect he wanted 2 years otherwise palace would have kept him
Players like Cahill and Wilshere will be getting a bit twitchy and may accept a one season deal and even a pay as you play deal for injury prone like Jack. Both would do a job for us
Wilshire is available on a free because he wasn't good enough to get regular playing time in the Championship last year. I'm not sure what job he'd do for us.
yeah all good points. I sort of feel like this might be time for a short term exception to that rule though. I’m feeling like we need a proven CB instead of an up and coming one. But again, happy to trust ralph if he likes the look of Salisu/Bednarek pairing
Don’t think I’d want to introduce any opportunity for players like Wilshire to turn our younger players’ heads.
Phil Jones is not a bad shout. He is crap for United but would be better than our CBs. I assume we will go for another Salisu type signing and let him be part of the rotation
Where have the Jones/Cahill names come from? I can't think of two defenders I would be less happy with - Cahill who is not good enough for Palace, and Phil Jones who has played maybe 15 games in the last 3 years? Awful suggestions.
Southampton sell CB Southampton need CB Southampton have a bit, but not much money Ralph says Southampton considering CB of all ages Everyone thinks "who is available and old" Cahill Southampton ON BRINK of signing Cahill. Southampton sign unknown CB from French league Everyone goes on to FM21 and Wikipedia Everyone pretends knowledge of deep French CB Everyone gets excited CB does not play for 4 months Everyone says we are **** at recruitment. Everyone says we should have signed Cahill. Cahill goes to West Ham and never plays. Rinse and repeat.
It’s more his fitness that is the concern And a Salisu type signing is clearly the ideal plan for the board. Someone we can sign for 10-15m and hopefully sell for 30m+ after 2-3 years
He is good enough for palace. They didn’t want him to go. He just wanted wages they wouldn’t pay. Which in fairness is why we are unlikely to get him It is like trying to say Ings isn’t good enough for us because we wouldn’t/couldn’t pay him what he thought he could get elsewhere - which is obviously nonsense. If we could pay him what Villa are then he stays with us.
Given Palace have gone out and spent £40m on new centre backs it illustrates that they could have paid Cahill what he wanted if they thought he was good enough, I can't imagine his demands are that unreasonable as a 35 year old. The thought of Cahill in our system is a thing of nightmares, he probably suited Roy's low block tbf.
It isn’t quite that simple. They are like us and have decided to go for the strategy of getting players in that they hope to increase in value and sell on for a profit . Something they should have done years ago to be fair. That doesn’t mean he isn’t good enough for them. They are just gambling on potential upside The defenders they got: > a guy who was part of a relegated defence that simply wasn’t good enough as a unit and who the Denmark manager believes is worse than Vestergaard - who certainly didn’t set the world alight for us > a guy with one season of first team football behind him (in the championship) and by all accounts has a clanger in him The difference is they have a lot of upside potential. But here and now Cahill is better than both of them (in my opinion of course)
Not to mention the fact that they're so far removed from our usual transfer strategy. Theo was very much an exception, largely because of his history. I would be amazed if we went out and signed someone like Cahill.