Voted the best defender in Serie A this year
Kalidou Koulibaly
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
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Yeh, but the Italian league is shit, or something.
I really like Skriniar but he’s just signed a new contract and secondly his ability in the air would be a big question mark.
Maguire would be fine if partnered with Tuanzebe. Partnered with Lindelof and you're asking for trouble with both players there to be toasted for pace.
if Koulibably goes for 100 and Maguire for 70, I'd go for Maguire and 30 mil for Toby (or Manolas).
Getting only one CB is risky. Imagine if Maguire or Koulibaly gets injured? Then we're back with Lindelof, Jones, Smalling and whoever else is there, which is pretty awful.
Like I mentioned, Maguire and Toby (or Manolas), Lindelof, Smalling and Tuanzebe should be our choices for CB. Sell Jones, Rojo and Bailly.
Maguire probably cost cheaper than that, I reckon £60m. 65m last summer since he had the World Cup performance and just signed a new contract.
While Koulibaly who isn’t exactly ball playing type cost £130m as that’s his release clause (Napoli doesn’t want to sell which force us to active it). He’s 2 years older & already 28, he might be top centre back but is it worthy to spend 130m on a 28 yo centre back who is likely only has 3 years left in his prime? A lot of top clubs who are looking for new centre back even start thinking about it.
I’m willing to spend the same money on de Ligt since he has many years to offer but we know he’s unrealistic target.
Would you do the same with De Ligt?
Can’t say it’s defo risky since it’s not like we are aiming to win or even challenging the league. Be tidy and get top 4 or CL spot is our initial target.
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He makes that look easy. Bar Lindelof I can't imagine one of our centre backs even thinking to be in that position let alone pull of that header.
Here's hoping he's coming here.
Here's hoping he's coming here.
That's bullshit, he's one of the best ball-playing defenders in the world, maybe not better than Luiz on through ball. David Luiz is up with there top in term of ball playing skills but he wasn't very good defensively.
Napoli winning 3-0 and Inter fans on Twitter are complaining that Koulibaly Bullies there players whenever they face the Senegalese defender. One example below..
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Could you imagine? It will never happen but dam that would be some CB pairing.
I genuinely don’t know what some people watch. He’s the definition of a ball playing defender.
His ball playing skills are up there with the best.
That would be just....oof. Especially if we kept De Gea....I'd cry
No good with his head.
As an all round center back hes easily top 3 in the world and has been for a while now. Brilliant on the ball, brilliant reading of the game, strong in the air, and just a commanding CB. If there's a single CB in the world who can have a Van Dijk-esque impact, it's Koulibaly. People just have some flawed image of him, even though he'd transform us defensively.
But he won't because we'll still struggle to score goals. Van Djik's impact was only as big as it was, because that their leaky defence was literally the only thing holding them back. They were scoring goals for fun.
We've gone 6 consecutive seasons now having a lacklusture attack.
Our defence is a much bigger problem than our attack. Both are issues, but there wasnt much between our attack/scoring/creativity stats compared to the rest of the top 4 challengers. Defensively we were statistically in the bottom half of the league. Nobody is saying we'll compete for the title with him, but he'd transform us in every single aspect of the game.
We're lacklustre in both attack and defence and need to spend significantly in both areas
But remember guys, he cannot head the ball so we should sign a lesser defender.
Not sure about the stats but in no way is our attack comparable to most of the other top 4/6. Maybe stats wise but in terms of ability it's not close imo. Our first choice front 3 would be Martial, Rashford and Lingard, or maybe Lukaku swapped in for one of those.
Comparatively our rivals have:
City: Sterling, Aguero, Bernado Silva, with Sane and Mahrez on the bench
Liverpool: Mane, Firmino, Salah, with Shaqiri and Origi on the bench
Spurs: Son, Kane, Dele, with Moura / Lamela / Llorente on the bench
Chelsea: Hazard, Giroud/Higuain, Willian, with Pedro / Pulisic / Hudson Odoi on the bench
Arsenal: Lacazette, Aubemyang with attacking midfielders in behind
The only one we're really close to imo is Arsenal, maybe Chelsea if Hazard leaves. Martial and Rashford are wildly inconsistent and imo both lack are a level below talent wise than their counterparts at City / Pool / Spurs, and Lingard is just rubbish. I think stats wise Pogba probably pads ours quite a bit, but he may be off this season too.
Pool and City both started to turn into top teams when they had great attacks, and then both bought in defence to solidify. Imo we should go a similar route, because having a great defence won't mean anything if we have the same attack, but conversely if we have a good attack at least we'll be bare-able to watch again.
Whenever I watched him play, majority that I see is a lot of sideway or short simple passing.
I meant in terms of stats. Chance creation/shows/goals/xG/every other barometer, its pretty similar between Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea and United over the course of a season. Say what you want about how it is on paper, but in reality, that's what they put out. We fix our defence and midfield, and we give our attack a better platform to perform, and hopefully they push on even more. If they don't, then we add what we need. Obviously a right winger is needed, but the others aren't needed for now at least. Much bigger problems and that simply has to be where our priority lies - the defence and midfield.
It straight up doesnt make sense, if you have a finite budget, to focus on your attack which is already performing at a ~top 4 level, when you have a defence/midfield that is performing at a bottom half of the table level.
City likely to be involved in this
They won't pay 100m for him. I think he'll be here next season....
Not impressed. Stopping goals is overrated. Everyone knows that the primary role of a centre back is building play up from the back.
Don't be miserable. He runs back to the goal because he sees a shots about to happen, and then stops it, would you think any of our defenders would have the ability to do that? Not overrated at all that's a goal if not for him...
For £100m we could possibly have Koulibaly and Alderweireld, with Lindelof either actually fighting for his place, or playing on the right of a 3. If we got a combined £25m for Rojo, Darmian, and Jones we'd be very well set... would still need a RB, RW, DM, and a Goal-scorer though...
Buying both Koulibaly and De Ligt should never be about "can we afford it" at a club with the yearly revenue Manchester United brings in. Ideally we should be snapping both up instead of "one or the other, but probably neither."
We shouldn’t focus on trying to fix all our problems in one summer. A rebuild will take longer than that. If we have to spend all our Cb money on Koulibaliy then we should do it, we’ve spent too much money on decent cbs but never a world class one. Koulibaliy will be our VVD we should go all out to sign him and if we can get another cb too then great but if not it’s fine.
Quality over quantity
Quality over quantity
You should check your sarcasm-meter. I think it's broken!
This is the go-to response when you haven't really watched a player and get called out for it, anyone who's watched more than a handful of Napoli games can tell you how good Koulibaly is on the ball.
He is a good player and would undoubtedly shore up our back line, but the prices quoted are insane. You could buy almost 2 VVD's for what De Laurentis wants for him. Our scouts surely have to have other targets lined up.
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