This is a brilliant post and 100% highlights the problems we have.
Martin Zubimendi
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Great, an excuse for us to not sign anyone under the pretense that we're waiting for them to screw up to sign him on cheap next year instead.
Spaniards love their pork.Nah ... apparently there're are plenty where those came from
Well… their beers are shit, so they’d have to have something worth loving.
Sure, but wine, cider, vermut...
Then the food... It's not really much of a battle, even before you get into the mountaineering and the tetas.
I had a cracking Rioja the other day.
Honestly, I completely agree with the approach of not signing people for the sake of it, midfield really isn't that much of a problem for us, especially now we've moved to a double pivot, a term I'm already getting bored of being mentioned everytime we talk about Slot, but I digress.
Sign this guy if he becomes avaliable, sure, but there's much bigger issues at left back, centre back and on the wings to think about.
Sign this guy if he becomes avaliable, sure, but there's much bigger issues at left back, centre back and on the wings to think about.
If they can only make a list of 1 name for 1 position, do you believe they have a list of 1 name for other positions?
I reckon our summer was going to be zubi and that keeper as the option arose
Ideally though, and again we've been here before, we all know we should have bought a left back, centre half, DM and right wing forward for about the last 2-3 seasons. It hasn't happened, and doesn't look like happening again. I don't think the squad is bad at all, I think we also have the bonus of Bradley, Nyoni and Quansah who we probably didn't bank on (or maybe we did). If Badger stays and doesn't get loaned out, then we do have a really varied and promising team. We could probably do with that extra bit of class in midfield, but maybe that's Nyoni sooner rather than later (or Elliott, if Slot does rate him). It's all just one big tough call, but if we buy a quality number 6, something has to give, someone will leave (likely Jones, Badger and/or Endo).
Our biggest gamble as ever is relying on certain players staying fit. As soon as you lose Jota and Konate for any length of time, the strength in depth suddenly looks suspect.
Maybe I'm being too positive here, but I feel they saw this not as a position they need to strengthen, but more an opportunity to get a specific player who suits our system and would improve it, similar to big verge but on a smaller scale.
Contrast that to the RW situation for example, where we clearly need to bring in an understudy for Salah, in that situation I'd hope we'd have a number of options, and sign which ever one made sense during negotiations, but alas we'll do fuck all and knee jerk when he leaves instead.
That isn't a gamble, it's negligence.
Only a fool would believe that we only have 1 name for 1 position. But its most likely that Zubimendi checked the most if not all boxes and the other names on the list would mean to compromise on some of them.
It will be up to Slot and Hughes on who will fit the best if not the top target. And then if the strategy is to go for the next or wait. Obviously we have to go for the next in line as everyone and his dog know that we need a 6.
Its weird that people chooses to believe a line from the media about us not seeing anyone as an upgrade to what we have bar Zubimendi. Thats obviously not even remotely true.
I could buy that if we weren't dumping Endo out, or if bajetic hadn't fallen off his career development, perhaps terminally.
What is the plan? Gravy at 6? What sort of evidence is there that that will work at the level required for a season, even if he's fit?
I think we only dump Endo if we sign Zubi, and having Slob, Mac, Gravy, Endo, Jones, Elliot plus the youth for three midfield positions is very good imo.
I think the Zubi or no-one point hinges on a belief that there are players in the squad who can do as good a job as any alternative they might bring in (or else that anyone else they'd bring in is not sufficiently transformational to justify the spend).
I get that.
But we need to strengthen. We have another tough league season ahead. If we were to win the Champions League next year we'd have to play at least 17 games (19 if we didn't finish top 8 in the new group stage). That's 55-57 games right there, where we're going to need a strong first team to make sure we get the right result. Obviously we can rotate in domestic cups, but even there if we go deep we'll likely call on the first team.
Our squad was cooked by the end of March last year. Since then we've lost Matip and Thiago (yeah, I know) plus Carvalho who might have been a good rotation option in attack, with talk of more players leaving.
So if we're moving on from Zubi then I'm OK with that. But I'm not OK with trimming down our squad in the face of a tough season coming up.
Hughes and Edwards need to pull their fingers out.
I get that.
But we need to strengthen. We have another tough league season ahead. If we were to win the Champions League next year we'd have to play at least 17 games (19 if we didn't finish top 8 in the new group stage). That's 55-57 games right there, where we're going to need a strong first team to make sure we get the right result. Obviously we can rotate in domestic cups, but even there if we go deep we'll likely call on the first team.
Our squad was cooked by the end of March last year. Since then we've lost Matip and Thiago (yeah, I know) plus Carvalho who might have been a good rotation option in attack, with talk of more players leaving.
So if we're moving on from Zubi then I'm OK with that. But I'm not OK with trimming down our squad in the face of a tough season coming up.
Hughes and Edwards need to pull their fingers out.
Spot on. Add to the 'the squad were cooked' point with a lot of players doing a whole summer too.
The manager doesn't want Endo playing there and is playing people out of position to make up for that. That makes two positions weaker.
It's a waste to put Mac at 6. I like watching him be brilliant doing his thing .
Why though? We've done it before. We missed out on tchouameni and then spent that money on Nunez. I genuinely believe the transfer team go "right, this is our guy, as no one else fits our criteria" and they do that for each position. This isn't scattergun approach like Chelsea; this is a sniper with 1 bullet focused on one target. Unfortunately the sniper has Parkinson's and keeps fucking missing
This is a new transfer team though. And for every Salah and Gini there were Brandts and Zielinskis.
Sometimes there will be a standout player and the other options won't be close enough to what we're after, sometimes there will be viable alternatives. As long as they look at each case on its own merits I don't have a problem with them saying "This time only Player X will do" and I mos def don't want us going back to our approach during the empty pre-Klopp years, when we operated a "Near enough is good enough" transfer policy and got nowhere fast.
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