The price is too high for what, in premier league terms, would be a good prospect. I'd say the same about Martinez
That Gary Neville interview and subsequent shenanigans are increasingly looking like the wrong way to go about things.
Even if Kane is staying, is it safe to say we still need another striker so he’s not run into the ground? Or do we presume that’s Scarlett’s role this season? I’m not sure I’m convinced by City’s interest in Vlahovic. Stinks of a smokescreen to get Kane cheaper.
By driving up the price of a one season wonder? If I was Levy I'd be saying that if an unproven in the PL, 21 year old is worth €85m then Kane must be worth over €250m.
Same as Grealish being worth £100million (would have been more if no release clause) and Lewandowski costing £100million and he’s 33 this weekend. Kane is easily worth £150million in comparison
For me Dier has to go, he has to many mistakes in him to be a premier league CB. Sanchez looks like he had lost all confidence last season. Not keen on either but for me with good coaching Sanchez might be able to get to the level we need of him. Dier on the other hand just isn't good enough.
We are seemingly too quick to forget the importance of a proper CM / DM setup to protect the CB pair. Even Woodgate and King struggled to be the best PL defensive pair because our central midfield was lacking for so long. Things haven't been the same since Dembele left and Wanyama's form dipped. (Even Dier being in the midfield did good things for Jan and Toby.) It's no surprise that Dier and Sanchez have an improved performance with better, more solid, protection in front of them than Winks and Sissoko.
i think it’s more the fact that they’ll pay €85m for a striker, but not what we’re asking for ours. But what you’re saying makes total sense!
At what point under Poch were Dier or Sanchez as routinely shambolic as they were under the ubermensch? This is why I regularly bring up how Old606 was demanding we bin off Michael Dawson during Ramos' reign
Protecting the pair is one thing, utter stupidity and brainfarts are another. The club wouldn’t have signed Cuti and still be chasing another CB if the issue was just having a proper DM in front of Dier and Sanchez.
Dier lost his place under Pochettino, hence why in the Amazon doc Jose questioned why that was, to which Dier responded saying he wasn’t sure when we all knew it was because he was performing poorly. Sanchez hasn’t kicked on since day one. An error prone player but capable of occasional strong performances. He’s been the same under Poch, Jose etc. So there’s the points.
Where? Dier lost his place because he wasn't good enough to continue as a DM yet also wasn't as good as Toby & Verts so effectively reverted to the utility player he was in his first season just on a much higher weekly wage, not because of a string of errors. Similarly, Sanchez wasn't guilty of habitual brainfarts under Poch either On the other hand, under Poch the defence usually had strong protection from the Dier/Dembele or Wanyama/Dembele pivots, something which started to disappear when Dembele and Wanyama physically deteriorated and we made do with the Winkssoko pivot, and also didn't regularly see either a huge gap where the right back should be or a huge gap in the centre due to one or two players drifting out wide to fill the gap where the right back should be which happened with alarming regularity between November 2019 and April 2021
The irony is that Sanchez is the CB we could get a decent fee for, considering Sevilla are interested and were willing to meet our valuation of €30m for him when we were negotiating for Kounde - meaning that Dier would likely remain for another season on the basis of the market returning to some form of normalcy next summer so we can get £15-20m for him, even though he was the Jonah of our CBs last season
By no means am I saying it's the only issue, but is it an issue. Just as Aurier being slightly more, shall we say, 'attack focussed' is an issue for whomever the RCB is. The wall named Tanganga being the RB helped also. Let's not pretend that having Dembele in the team didn't cover for a number of ills that in his absence, became obvious.
It also has to be said that the depressed market is also potentially biting us in the backside, considering that Ndombele has (supposedly...) said that he wants to leave, but that puts us in a quandary because if we do sell him we're having to write off at least £20m since there's no way we're getting close to the £55m we paid for him, and there's the likelihood that we'll be subsidising a chunk of his £120k a week wages for a season or two to get him out the door Obviously there's scenarios where he could be an asset in the most literal sense, for example the various fantasy offers we can make to Inter of cash + Ndombele any combination of Martinez, Barella, Skriniar or Brozovic, but there also has to be a point where we get value out of that arrangement (i.e. there's potential value in using him to sign Luka Jovic, but there isn't potential value in using him to sign some Barca deadwood like Umtiti and Braithwaite),
Dier was brilliant at DM with dembele imo, only to be ousted by wanyama for the 2 seasons he first joined (i believe they rotated between them for the first half of wanyamas first season). Dier was so good in that position, United were supposedly happy to spend 40m on him when 40m meant something. Obviously, Diers game deteriorated as when Wanyama suffered his injuries, Dier was giving a chance but couldn't recapture his hey day when he was partnering dembele. The fact that a sissoko/winks pivot was preferred over him kind of exemplifies how far his stock has fallen.
