Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

I haven’t seen the actual Athletic article, just the rehashed bit from an aggregator but I’d imagine the Athletic differentiates forwards and strikers to be honest, I think Conte uses the word attackers more so than strikers too, albeit I haven't listened too much to Conte of late as it's jarring listening to him this season, so I could easily be wrong there.

I think another forward/ striker would be dependent on a few factors. If Kane renews, Danjuma signs permanently and Gil is integrated on his return then I'd say we have good numbers, with Son and Danjuma at LW, Kane and Richarlison at ST and Kulu and Gil at RW. We may also have Parrott around the squad too as "the extra". But if Kane leaves, Danjuma doesn't sign and Gil isn't favoured when he's back then we could need multiple attacking players. The decision on Son will be a big one, I've said the same in the past but on reflection I'd backtrack and keep him regardless of his second half of the season, he's done so much for us and helped carry this team for years alongside Kane that if we have to carry him for a while so be it, I just hope Conte grows some balls and benches him if he continues his poor form.

As for Richarlison, I was never sold on him as you all know. I just don't quite get what he does or offers. I don't feel he fits in with our front three whenever he plays either, never seems to be on the same wavelength and he doesn't have the ability our main trio have in terms of being able to turn the game on its head via individual brilliance, he's the type of player that requires a through ball or a cross. We needed another option up top last summer but I think we got it horrendously wrong with him, more so when you look at how much we spent.

 

A RW was certainly mentioned during January, mainly as a Lucas replacement

...ignoring the fact we have one, but he got so pee'd off he went on loan to Sevilla

 

I’m hearing Man U will offer Greenwood as well as the cash for Kane this summer.

Loooool.

yeah sure.

 

Maddest thing is we’ve not even missed Lucas, so his replacement probably wouldn’t have played if he joined. Would’ve been like replacing Njie with Nkoudou, or nobody with Richarlison…

 

Soonsup-Bell supposedly joined us as he saw a better route to the first team here than at Chelsea.

Oh you foolish young man.

 

The most annoying thing about the Richarlison move was that for the same money we could have bought one or perhaps even two CBs to completely transform our back line.

Scoring goals has never been much of a problem, even at our lowest ebb. It shouldn't be with the likes of Kane, Son and Kulusevski around (and with Hojbjerg and Bentancur chipping in from midfield). Conceding goals and especially trying to play a system that requires countering from a low block was always going to be tricky with the likes of Dier and Sanchez around.

I highly doubt we'd be in the position we're in now if Richarlison had been Skriniar plus Bastoni/Hincapie instead. In fact, we'd probably be right on Arsenal's coattails.

 

I've said similar.

I was all for bringing in another forward, especially a backup to Kane but knowing that unless Kane gets injured we rarely rest, rotate or even sub him off, the backup to him could've easily been another journeyman or someone at the tail end of the career, in the Vinicius or Llorente moulds. Spending £60m on someone who can't play RW, is ok at LW and will rarely play in their preferred position of ST, was just another "doh" moment by this football club when it comes to spending large amounts of money, especially when that player is only worth about half of the fee we paid.

Just one £50m+ calibre CB alongside Romero could've made a world of difference.

 

Is this the point where I once again kvetch that we need a Kante-type and Modric-type player in our midfield for the system to effectively work?

...a sentence I have repeated since the summer of 2018?

 

He has not played enough, not has he played in a
formation that best matches his abilities (re Brasil) .

And on the latter, we cannot claim that the Brasil
attack supporting the strikers was orders of magnitude
better than Spurs this season.

 

He likely won't play enough though and that's excluding the fact he's been getting constant injuries. He simply isn't good enough to displace any of Kane, Son (form aside) or Kulusevski from the XI, especially Kane, who plays in his preferred position.

That's part of the gripe people like myself and CK have with spending so much on someone that doesn't improve nor make our strongest XI, we needed someone for the role but we didn't need to make it a record signing when there were more pressing needs that required significant funding.

The harsh reality is, we're likely going to be talking of Richarlison in the same breath as Ndombele, Lo Celso and co within the next 18 months, possibly earlier.

 

Porro Watch
Record (the Portuguese one, etc etc) claim that The Sheikh Mansour Team tried to gazump us on Deadline Day, but Porro told them he gave us his word he'd join us so told them to bugger off

please log in to view this image

 

Agreed and I know you're not a fan of the idea and I've mentioned it maybe a hundred times, but I was half convinced we'd signed him to be a back-up to Kane but primarily to lead the line with Kane just behind him in more of a front 4 like we had under Poch. I had no idea just how wedded Conte is to the wing-back system with 3 up top, so much so that he wilfully plays awful players on the flanks and allows our midfield to be overrun, all for the sake of a formation.

The sad truth is, Richarlison was clearly a player Conte himself was pushing for, and his signing very much echoes his recruitment at Chelsea, where he personally pushed for the signatures of numerous expensive players who totally flopped.

 

If you look at how H plays at the moment, where he pulls to the right of the box when we're building up down the left, that's exactly how Diego Costa played at Chelsea - and with that in mind, given Richy is easily the strongest in the air out of all our forwards it's likely that at some point Conte's plan was Richy up top with H playing deeper

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/64493480

Very timely and important article.

Summarises a problem that has been growing unchecked for the best part of two decades. The warning sign was the takeover at Chelsea. The EPL has marched unstoppably forward since then, leaving the entire continent behind.

It isn't so much the fact that over half the top 10 wealthiest clubs in the world are all in the PL, half of the top 20 are also all from the PL.
What's scary is that even though Wolves and Villa dropped out from last year's rich list, they were simply and immediately replaced by Leeds and Newcastle this year - no other country is within a country mile of the gravy train we've built here.

The point made that PL clubs will struggle to offload unwanted players as even an 'ordinary' salary here puts a player in the top percentile of earners in most continental leagues, really resonated with me as it is exactly the problem we are facing on a massive scale.

 

TBH the warning signs have been there for the best part of ten years now within the Premier League, because once the league lost a handful of teams who were reasonably established in the league so had decent cash reserves such as Swansea and Stoke that coincided with us going from getting decent (or even silly) money for players like Wimmer and Naughton to having trouble offloading our players because at that point they were replaced either by clubs which switch divisions routinely such as Norwich, clubs who maintain a tight budget like Burnley, or clubs with the same buy low/sell high approach we had a decade ago like Brighton

In other words, Everton have been really bad at playing their role recently, as they should have paid through the nose for Sanchez by now

 

Yeah the thing with Kane at 10 and Richarlison at 9 is that it just felt too “Football Manager-y” to me. Not really keen on the logic of having our best finisher moved deeper to accommodate a weaker finisher in front of him. When Kane played the hybrid role he had the positional freedom of a 9 and 10, having him just play the 10 with someone else at the 9, I just don’t think it works as much as we’d perhaps like it too.

I really don’t quite get what Conte/ the club saw or expected from Richarlison. It was a huge head scratcher for me. With other big money flops they came with hope and potential at the least, with Richarlison I just saw a massively overpriced, slightly above average player that wouldn’t really improve us other than provide an upgrade on Bergwijn and Lucas in the squad but as of yet he’s not even been that.

So far an incredible waste of money that hasn’t really come as much of a surprise.

 

I'd like to find out at some point, instead of playing a bunch of players out of position.
Kane plays better when he can drop deep, but so do Son and Kulusevski.
His creativity helps everyone and we're sorely lacking in it at the moment.
I wouldn't start all four, but I'd like to see it used as an option if we're trailing.

 

Having Kane revert to the hybrid role likely solves a number of issues but I’m not overly interested in seeing Richarlison lead the line in front of Kane. I think it’d end up being counter productive. If we’re chasing a game and going gung-ho then yeah, it’d be worth a shot to have all four on but you could argue that case for bringing on any of Lucas, Danjuma and Richarlison when in that situation, Danjuma (on very early impressions) especially looks like he could be a very handy player off the bench and even an option to start if Son doesn’t pick himself up soon.

I just wish we didn’t put ourselves in this mess where we’re trying to figure out how to make use of a £60m squad player.

 

The initial idea was presumably that he could play as cover for the front 3.
Primarily Kane and Son, in my opinion, but I'm not sure Conte shares it.
He stuck him on the right in Kulusevski's absence and it just doesn't work.
He's not a similar player and it's his weakest position of the 3 by far.