Spence doesn’t seem like a Conte signing if I’m honest, he’s another one with potential but will need a lot of coaching
He does play very similarly to Doherty, which is presumably how Paratici sold it to him The fact we were first linked with Spence a couple of seasons ago, though...
I’d be more concerned about how Conte views it if we hadn’t also signed a lot of more experienced players. In Perisic and Forster we have bags of experience added to the dressing room and in Richarlison and Bissouma we have two who know the PL very well. Spence will have plenty around him to help him and he was playing in a back 3 for his breakout season. I doubt he’ll be thrown straight in, injuries permitting, but hopefully it’ll be one Conte enjoys working with as he has all the raw ingredients if he wants to make it a success.
Milan linked with Tanganga again according to Di Marzio. Wouldn’t accept anything less than £20m and with some clauses too. If Japh could ensure his fitness I’d rather keep him over Sanchez, Sanchez is a solid deputy but you never know when the next brainfart is, Tanganga isn’t as error-prone but he is however certainly more injury-prone.
From the limited amount of times I have seen Spence play i think he has the potential to be a top quality WB. He loves to get forward and makes intelligent runs in behind. His final ball leaves a lot to be desired but hopefully working with Perisic the coaching team that will improve. He seems to have a great engine and is able to get up and down. Probably not someone on the top of Conte's list but I do think that Conte will like him.
Good. One of the roles of a DoF is to identify prospects whose ability and longevity at the club will at the minimum trranscend the time and beliefs of a manager.
What's happening with Reguillon, we are a bit overloaded with LWBs now? Him or Sess will surely leave now.
At least one of our fullbacks will leave, as we need to reduce our non-homegrown numbers. We can probably keep five, as Perisic, Doherty and Sessegnon call all play different positions. Royal was linked with Atletico, but nothing strong on either him or Reguilon, IIRC.
Anyone else get the feeling the real reason Spence is dragging on is because Paratici is working on bringing in a different RWB? It's like how Tomiyasu and Amrabat were negotiated with at a sedate pace, then out of the blue we sign Emerson and Bentancur quicker than anything on Football Manager
At least that’s almost certainly one more in before we fly out to Korea then, would be great if we could wrap up Spence too but I’ve given up predicting when or even if we’ll get that one done. Should be a good pre-season though, we’ve got most of our targets in already and there’s still just under a week until our first friendly. I’d imagine Conte’s gotta be pretty happy with that.
Glad to have Lenglet through the door. Hopefully a change of scenery and working under Conte will get his confidence back because there's a very good player there. However I'm disappointed there's no buy option in the deal. IF Lenglet excels this season then as it stands he will be back as an improved player at Barca next summer , possibly worth a lot more than he is now and we will have to start again. Hopefully somewhere further down the line an option to the loan will be added just to cover us.
I think there are other priority targets at LCB, who are more long-term, who for whatever reason have not been gettable this summer. Think Bastoni, Gvardiol etc. Lenglet is quite transparently a short term option given his age and the loan with no option. Unless we can’t get anywhere with options in the next 12 months and unless he absolutely smashes it, I doubt we’ll look for a permanent deal.
Maybe it was us that weren't fussed about the option to buy? We clearly had long term targets like Bastoni and Gvardiol that couldn't get done this summer so maybe he is just a temporary fix and the loan that we have negotiated fits the bill.
If there is no buy option, that highlights the plan is to go back for Bastoni or Gvardiol next summer, and honestly that's fine because it's better to have somebody filling that role than shrug because the one player we wanted was not available (as happened in the summer of 2018) It does say a lot, though, that eight years ago we were signing Benjamin Stambouli as a stopgap...