I'd be surprised if he's still here come September. Thought he was poor last season personally and was really disappointed after what I thought was a good signing.
He never got started with his injuries last year and while he wasn't great, there is a player there, wont be a world beater, but would do a job when required
I'm not really a fan of Browne to be honest, but with that being said, he's probably right to fill the 6th midfielder spot. He's there for AFCON and emergency cover and specific situations off the bench. He's got experience, he's got consistency and he won't be shouting about lack of games. The idea of 2 players for each position is great on paper but when you look at the reality, you have 114 starts for your midfield positions. Assuming Le Feè gets the most starts (30) followed by Diarra and Neil (25) and then Rigg and Sadiki (15). That's 110 starts. That leaves Alan Browne with 4 starts through AFCOn/Injuries and maybe a cup appearance. There's no midfielder good enough to start who will be happy with less than 10 games and you can't rotate the main group any more than I've already suggested and expect them to perform consistently and continue to develop. People can swap Browne for Triantis or even Jones or Aleksic if they'd prefer.
If we were willing to offer close to £20m that’s a fair chunk for a keeper especially shopping abroad. To tout the idea of wanting someone considerably better to come in like those two mentioned and then not bother at all would be disappointing but it’s budget dependant I suppose we still need several outfield players
As @FellTop has mentioned though, will he want to be a bit part player and likely continue to be out of the Ireland squad, or would he want to go play 35+ Championship games for a decent team. Think a few fall into that bracket and it'll be interesting to see.
I like Browne as a player but hes never PL quality, i get the argument of him being 6th choice but I think we need another CDM to come Browne will have plenty of interest in him from championship sides
I know. That said. You’d want the signings to be in before game day 1 and I think the club agree. I wasn’t saying we couldn’t do the business in 5 weeks because we can I was just saying it doesn’t seem long away
Its will be interesting to see who has the belief that they can step up and earn a place. We certainly wont be having any guaranteed starters at the rate we are going
Not sure that’s true tbh. Just because we didn’t sign those two doesn’t mean there isn’t more keepers out there we could sign who are better than Patto
£20m will not get you a top-20 in the world goalkeeper unless he is in his 30s and even then they're unlikely to want to come here, so we're looking at good youngish keepers who want to play in the premier league and then we've likely got a budget that tops out at £20m for that position, any selling club will also likely need to spend to replace, just looking at the market the list of keepers is small. I agree it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring in a good keeper if we can, but I'd be against spending a lot (£20m ish) on a keeper that only competes with Patto.
to be fair, don’t think it had anything to do with Regis giving him the armband think it was more to do with trying to keep him from leaving in my opinion
Let's see that long list of keepers that are available, within budget and willing to come who are much better than Patto (all stipulated in my post) ?
I’m pretty confident there will be players that fit that criteria but I’m not a football scout and don’t pretend to be an expert so couldn’t name them. proof will be in the pudding over the next few weeks. Or sooner if the club get their wish of bringing one in this week
Problem is people don't read they feel, my posts leaves room for a player that fits the profile but is honest about how many players like that there are, because there are few, and few doesn't mean we can't find one of them it just means it's not a piece of cake.
yeh none of it’s easy. But there’ll be plenty out there who will jump at the chance of a year minimum in the premier league. We’ve aimed high and may need to lower expectations but there’s still some way to go before it becomes pointless replacing Patto, if that makes sense