Emulating big Virg.
Minamino
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Emulating big Virg.
Fuck me - Arsenal ?!? Have the bookies not bothered to watch them play this season ?
If the Arse fans won`t watch it why should the bookies?
Adams and Mckennie are quality players in their early 20s. Sergino Dest of Ajax, while not US born, chose to play for the US and would be a good understudy at RB/LB.
Edwards is a legend.
Erm... If United tabled a bid and were allowed speak to the player and his agent they would have discovered his clause.
If a big European team came in for him then he would be allowed leave for 7.25mil.
We were giving the heads up on the clause and had a head start to agree terms with club and player.
United and other clubs prob planned another month of tyre kicking as his supposed value was closer to 25million.
Maybe Curtis Jones and/or Brewster heads the other direction on loan?
Do you think his preference was us over the rest of he went Enimeniminamino?
Oh god! Seriously?
Thing is their season ends in a few weeks.
What the actual fuck does this even mean?
Are you the early stages of some experiment? Like are you the first iteration of some kind of semi-sentient bot being test run on this forum? Do your makers know it's not going too well?
He’s the Danny DeVito from twins. Nobody knows where the Schwarzeneggar is.
Yeah. It was done about a page before you posted that car crash. Only much better.
See, the Gini, Mina, Mane, Mo joke kinda worked because most people have heard that.
Yours is a clusterfuck that leaves us thinking about white rappers and fluids up the rectum.
AIs, if given access to the internet, turn aggressive and racist. So, we can rule that out as DB is quite nice. There is some proof of sentience though, as he's trying to teach others how to be stupid like him in another thread.
It isn't. It's just a mong being a mong.
How good is this guy then? Red Bull has impressive stats this season, and I am sure he has played his part, but I must admit I only saw them against us.
[article]Ralf Rangnick believes Liverpool target Takumi Minamino is in Jurgen Klopp's mould, with the Red Bull Salzburg attacking midfielder on the verge of completing a move to Anfield.
Liverpool are in talks to sign Minamino for £7.25m when the January transfer window opens, subject to a medical, and Red Bull's head of sport and development has told Sky Sports News the 24-year-old has been given the perfect football education for a potential spell at Anfield.
"The style is very similar to Jurgen's," he said. "It's proactive, it's high pressing, counter-pressing. Once we have won the ball we don't want to waste any time by square passes or back passes.
"We are trying to play forward as quickly as possible, trying to create chances, trying to score as many goals as possible."
If Liverpool sign Minamino, he will be the fifth player Jurgen Klopp has signed from the Rangnick production line.
Rangnick added: "It's definitely no coincidence that he has four former players of mine (Roberto Firmino, Naby Keita, Sadio Mane and Joel Matip) because it shows that he is, in fact, looking for the same kind of players, with the same assets, with the same mentality as we do. And, I think, out of the top clubs in Europe, he's probably the coach with the highest number of former players from us."
"He doesn't have to thank me!"
Given the brand of football Rangnick, now overseeing Red Bull's teams in New York and Sao Paulo, has introduced at his clubs, it's clear why the players he's nurtured suit Klopp so well.
Minamino is clearly a player who buys into that philosophy. While no longer involved with Salzburg, Rangnick was their sporting director when they signed him from Cerezo Osaka in 2015. This season, Minamino has scored nine and provided 11 assists in 22 games.
"You could see he was good on the ball, very technical, good mentality. He is also like many Japanese players, willing to invest in the team's efforts to win the ball back.
"Of course he had to learn those things tactically, but his willingness and his mentality was already there. He's not the kind of player to say, OK the other team has got the ball so, please let me know once we have the ball so I then can take part in the game again. Even at the age of 19, you could see he was a good boy."
You could argue there is an inevitability that Rangnick, who combined the roles of sporting director and head coach at RB Leipzig last season, will end up in English football.
His connection goes back to his days studying at the University of Sussex where he watched Brighton at the old Goldstone Ground one week, and Arsenal at Highbury the next.
Since then various possibilities to work in English football have presented themselves. In 2013 he was interviewed for the Everton manager's job. The year before it was West Brom.
Then in 2016, he was down to the final two in the race to become England manager, only for the FA to go with Sam Allardyce.
Now, with 18 months left on his contract at Red Bull, Rangnick is being linked with roles at both Manchester United and Arsenal, the attraction of both clubs undeniable.
"Of course any big club in England should be attractive, but also there has been no contact between the relevant clubs and myself."
"I'm very happy and my full focus is on my job at Red Bull. Should that change it takes a lot [not money] because I'm more than happy with what I'm doing now."
So what would it take to tempt him away?
"If I look back on the last 14 years, six years in Hoffenheim and eight years with Red Bull, they were extremely successful and in each club I was a builder, developer and, at times, head coach for the relevant teams."
"Should I take into consideration to work for any other club it needs to have a similar scenario and a similar opportunity to have the authority to develop things in the club because, if I only work as a head coach or only as a sporting director, it will be only 50 per cent of what a club could get if I'm working in both positions."
Last season RB Leipzig benefited with a third-placed finish in the Bundesliga and an appearance in the German Cup Final. More crucial, however, is the structure left in place for long-term success. A blueprint for others to follow.
"You need to have an idea yourself as a club because if you don't have that idea of 'what does the club stand for', then with every change of manager it's very likely you will change a lot of players. If you change a lot of players it costs you quite a lot of money.
"It seems to me logical that somebody in the club should make sure that there is a certain idea of what the club should stand for and make sure that you stick to that."[/article]
[article]First came Sadio Mane. Then Naby Keita followed.
Now Takumi Minamino will take the path from Salzburg to Liverpool . Only this time, it will be direct.
While Mane moved to Merseyside via Southampton , and Keita enjoyed a productive spell at RB Leipzig before his £52million switch to Anfield, the Japanese international will join directly, for a bargain price of £7.25million.
For the Reds, the signing of Japan international Minamino is a coup.
A player monitored and scouted for six years, since his breakthrough in the J-League with Cerezo Osaka, through his time in Austria, where the recruitment team have been left hugely impressed by his growth as a player and the underlying data behind his performances.
Minamimo had also earned rave reviews and drawn admiring glances from elsewhere.
Borussia Monchengladbach, current Bundesliga leaders, on the advice of head coach Marco Rose - who enjoyed a couple of fine years working up close with Minamino as Salzburg chief - were keen on a January switch to enhance their chances of a first German title since 1977. AC Milan too were keen.
And, as revealed by Mirror Football, Manchester United have also been keeping tabs on his progress, regular watchers as they eye the kind of No.10, with speed, smart movement, goals, assists and pressing ability that is so lacking in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's squad.
But none were able to get out in front of the European champions, who have done a painstaking amount of due diligence since 2013 and knew about Minamino's low, low release clause - something of which their rivals were never aware.
Certainly, the relationship of sporting director Michael Edwards with counterparts at the Red Bull sponsored organisation, notably their own sporting director, Christoph Freund have helped and played a key part.
Freund, 42, pre-dates Red Bull in Salzburg and has worked his way through the ranks, learning from his Ralf Rangnick, before taking over from the highly-respected German back in 2015.
Now, the owner of Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz, excepted, Freund is the most important figure at the Red Bull Arena, in the shadow of the Eastern Alps, continuing push the 'proactive, high pressing' philosophy of his predecessor.
For Freund, losing Minamino, like Mane, Keita and numerous other emerging talents to elsewhere, is both a sign of where Salzburg are in elite football's pecking order, but also a show that they are doing things the right way when it comes to talent identification and team building.
"In the last four or five years we have been really successful in our way," says Freund, speaking to Mirror Football.
"We work with young players and we sell players who play two or three years in our club and do. very well.
"I saw a picture from our team two years ago in the half final of the Europa League and only four players from this squad are now in our team.
"So you can feel how a lot of changes are had and we now have a very interesting team on the pitch. So this is a very, very successful story for the club because we want to bring young players into the first team and we've been very successful in the last years."
For Freund, that evolution is a continual process. He and his scouting department cannot stop, they must continually be looking at what, or who, is next. Who will be next to leave? Is their a youth player that can step into their place? Which target from elsewhere should they move on? Which player will make a breakthrough and have bids come in?
Constant evolution. Constant evaluation. Players coming, players going.
"This is the story here and not always so easy," Freund adds. "We want, not want, but we sell the players to give them the opportunity to make the next step to a bigger club and for sure we are very proud.
"For example Sadio [Mane] is one of the best players in the world - Messi was not happy with the fourth place [at the Ballon d'Or - and they won the Champions League, an outstanding successful story.
"For us also it's important if we speak with young players, their agents and their parents, we can show them a lot of players come here, not with big names, but now they're playing in big leagues and this is very important for us as a club."
As Salzburg themselves have grown - this year reaching the Champions League group stage for the first time after a number of near misses - the need for players to take the extra step has lessened.
Thus Minamino, rated in the £30million bracket by Liverpool, being deemed capable of stepping straight in on Merseyside and having an impact.
Or the fuss around Erling Braut Haaland, attracting attention from the continent's biggest teams just five months into the teenage striker's life as a starter. His strike partner, Hee-Chan Hwang, is a January target for Wolves , whose technical director Kevin Thelwell was in Austria on Tuesday night for Liverpool's 2-0 win. The South Korean will likely cost in excess of £20million.
But bigger money transfers has not and will not see a change in approach at Salzburg, according to Freund.
"The best decision for me is that we don't lose our way. Because we have a lot of income and a lot of good transfer incomes.
"A lot of clubs change their strategy, giving more money to players or older players and we dont change our strategy.
"We are only focused on young players, highly talented players, and this is very important that we dont change. We are crystal clear on which players we want and also which coaches we want. We don't sign big name coaches, Marco Rose was a youth team coach, Jesse Marsch is first coach from America, he is not a big name in Europe.
"We want to find players and coaches and our people in our club are convinced in our way. I think this is the most important decision that we go this way, 100 percent.
"Everybody knows in our scouting department which player we are searching for.
"We are only searching for 16, 17, 18, 19, maximum 20 years old.
"And also which player we want to find: We need speed, intelligence, good mentality, good character, fast in the head, so I think this is very important that we know what we're searching for. This is a little bit different, maybe, to other clubs.
"I cannot say what other clubs are doing, but this is important for us, that we know what we're searching for."
One of those, for Freund his greatest find, is Liverpool's Mane.
Found in France with Metz, the Senegalese scored just once in 19 outings in Ligue 2 as they were relegated to the third tier. One goal in three games followed at the start of the 2012-13 campaign, when Salzburg decided to take the plunge, spending €4million to take him to Austria.
"The most successful player and the highest level reached is Sadio Mane. I found him in Metz in the third division and his development was outstanding... I think he's one of the best players in the world.
"We saw a lot of potential. We saw his movements, his speed, he was so hungry to score goals.
"When we then met him personally he was really clear and he wanted to make the next step.
"But it was not easy, it was a different language, a different culture. I can remember very well when he first started here it was very interesting progress.
"In the end if you sign a player...also like Erling Haaland , you see at 16, 17, an outstanding mentality, an outstanding left foot, but you never know, you can't be 100 percent sure he's going to develop like this. Also with Sadio it was like this.
"We always see a lot of things in the future, sometimes small things on the pitch, and you say 'Wow! It looks so easy when you make this movement' and so on. Also with Naby, there was some small things, small details I'd never seen before and it was so easy.
"Also very important again is the mentality...how is the player outside the pitch? How is he in training? How is his reaction when he loses a game? How is he with his teammates? This is very important for us. I always say mentality is more important than talent."
But how do you identify the player's true character from afar?
"Its not easy," adds Freund. "We try to get a lot of information around him or we can see things with our eyes in training sessions and so on. Then you try to make the whole picture and make the decisions.
"Sometimes you are wrong, sometimes you are right."
Mane would repay Salzburg's faith with 45 goals in 87 games, a league and cup double in 2014, when the club would land £12million from Southampton for his transfer. The Saints more than doubled that figure when selling two years later. More often than not, Salzburg's scouting and analysis departments are spot on.
It's put to Freund that Salzburg do the groundwork, and others, ultimately, will profit.
"This is our story."
Chief among those benefiting are the runaway Premier League leaders.[/article]
White rappers?
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