How reliable is this and what do we know about Eze?
Centre Midfielder Transfer Links
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How reliable is this and what do we know about Eze?
We were linked a few weeks back but it seems it's done now
Box to box midfielder and one of City academy's finest. Has also captained England u16's, could be promising
So am I. It's the way football is going. Signing young players, if they don't make the first team, sell them for pure PSR profit. Which goes into your transfer pot.
Youth signings are good for future, however still need to make at least two more senior ones yet
Really curious if we’re going for a big signing in midfield and who this could be
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Well the big ones would be although none feel likely are
Zaire-Emery
Tchouameni
Camavinga
Saw him live at the World Cup. First touch and ability to receive a ball while covered was genuinely world class, but he didn't really have any explosion to him to turn it into carrying the ball forward, so just got fouled a million times instead of running away from the defender, like a slower, more skilled Grealish I guess? Croatia didn't really have the front 3 to get in behind, so no idea if he could replace Bruno long-term as a creative #10.
Scored against England didn't he
i do like them bringing in these talented young kids who are close to competing for the first team opportunities
Aren't most of them academy signings?
Don't think the lad from Spurs is
Yeah that one feels a bit different
agreed...Thompson i think is a kid that is meant for the first team fast track just like JJ
these younger kids though are 16/17....given how football is going now you need the young players ready by 18/19 years old for top clubs given the volume of matches they play if in all comps
Lovely goal.
Looking at his goal numbers, he's the same age as Bruno was when he broke out and they were both consistently getting 4-6 goals a year before. Obviously Baturina is very unlikely to be that prolific (goals or assists), but with his first touch, if he can be a 10 goal a year #8/10, he'll be a very good player that you can build a nice 3 man midfield with.
I wouldn't be mad at all if next summer starts with us selling Mount to Villa for 40M and buying Baturina for 70M, with an eye to giving him a year or two as a backup #10 before taking over for Bruno.
What’s the catch? People make Andres sound like a no brainer for a number of teams and yet he doesn’t seem to be linked with anyone.
We finished 15th the season before last. Last summer we spent a bunch of money rebuilding our attack which helped us jump up to third. Is that playing it safe? What were you really expecting in the circumstances?
The amount we spent on Cunha, Sesko, Mbuemo and Dorgu in those Jan and summer windows now looks like money very smartly spent when you look at the crazy figures players are now going for this summer.
This summer we’re clearly hurting from low revenues due to so few match days plus no Europe. Despite that we are rebuilding the midfield. It pretty hard to argue that 185 million on Tonali and Fernandes would have been a smarter approach for us than 85 million on Tielemans and Santos. And you’d have to be delusional to think we can compete financially with City right now - it would be futile even trying to. The best hope we have to win the league in the next few years is to rebuild various areas of the squad with smart scouting, not blowing huge sums on one or two players who may or may not work out.
I’m not necessarily complaining about the approach from INEOS, but more the state of the market (do it all midfielders demand is high) and the fact that maybe our ambitions for next season are a bit… timid.
The risk is that when you spend 100m on a player expectations are high and we’ve been burned before. Some clubs (Brighton, Bournemouth etc) buy youth and potential, lots of small bets. At the other end, Real, PSG and Barca buy top talent at both ends, scouring the planet for top youth while simultaneously paying obscene amounts for top youngish talent. I do think the signing 16-17 year olds we have been bringing in is smart. However, building out a squad to challenge for silverware at the top end has proven challenging. Tielemans is fine, as is Santos, but they have nowhere near the championship pedigree needed to challenge for the league.
Remember, these INEOS fellas are the same guys that extended ETH, brought in Amorim, bought Zirkzee and DeLigt (injuries, I know) and Ugarte. I just worry that they are more concerned with balance sheets and not losing money or value in their assets rather than building a championship squad.
The trouble is they are trying to build a squad and stop the club losing money at the same times. I still don't believe we are operating in quite the same way as Spurs did under Levy though. We are also having to be shrewd in this crazy market or will end up back in the Woody days again. I am confident there will be another midfielder signed soon, just not when we keep on expecting it.
All three players mentioned were bought with good intentions. De Ligts backpains have been terribly unlucky, but he showed before that, that he is one of the best cbs in the league, which is exactly what we need.
Ugarte and Zirkzee showed some quality in earlier clubs but it did not work out here, but that happens to all clubs. Omar and Jason might not be transfer geniuses, but, you will not find a ceo and sporting director with nothing but big successes on their transfer record. Everyone has their share of transfers that did not work out as well as they hoped for.
Newcastle signing 19 year-old Aladji Bamba from Monaco for €41mil - this is a deal United should have been all over.
Forget Sangare and Lamine Camara, this would have been the guy Brighton would have turned to as the Baleba replacement, were they to have sold him to United this window.
Forget Sangare and Lamine Camara, this would have been the guy Brighton would have turned to as the Baleba replacement, were they to have sold him to United this window.
Be interesting to see if Barcelona go into the market now...
Players like that are certainly capable of challenging for the league. Indeed, Villa were in the mix for a large chunk of this season. For the second half of last season we were in title winning form with shallower and less well rounded centre midfield options than we’ll likely have next season.
League winning teams aren’t entirely made up of world class or £100 million talents. Large chunks of title winning teams are made up of quality, functional players who have clear roles and who add important balance and variety. In amongst that you have a few really high level game changing players who can make the difference at key moments (which we already have - Fernandes, Cunha, Sesko, Mbeumo, Amad and Dorgu have all shown they can win games with exceptional moments).
I see this time and time again where posters say that Cunha and Mbeumo aren’t good enough to win leagues with, or the midfielders aren’t enough to win leagues with, whilst ignoring the fact that our rivals have literally won leagues with worse players still very playing important roles. They just have deep and well balanced enough squads whereby the more functional players provide a consistent and high enough base for the best players to shine.
INEOS have a poor record with their managerial choices, but it seems to me their player recruitment is getting much better. Since the summer they bought Ugarte and Zirkzee they have completely revamped our recruitment and scouting team, as well as our data analytics. That seems to have born fruit in the past couple of windows, with us showing a much higher hit rate and finding decent value in the market, and as a direct result we are now much closer to a title challenging squad than we were. It seems churlish to keep damning them based on recruitments mistakes made years ago prior to this revamp. If they keep managing to address the obvious deficiencies in our squad with smart scouting, then we will challenge for a title. Ultimately I think we’ll fall short this season - with our lack of quality at FB and lack of consistency at CB letting us down. But I think we’ll do a lot better than many posters seem to assume
Who? They always have at least one or two of the leagues best players alongside the functional players. Genuine question as I can't think of a single side that doesn't have a 100m talent along side these types of players.
Rashy reborn as a holding midfielder
Really dodged a bullet on this one, he's become an expensive crock over the last few years.
Bless his girlfriend/wife and her love of Barcelona
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After the last month no one really knows what the club are doing until it's basically done, all this speculation is kinda pointless in my opinion
Eh? I said such players were supplemented with a few higher quality players. That was literally the point I was making. Arsenal have some such players, as do City, and as do we.
Arsenal just won the league with the likes of Martinelli, Trossard, Gyokeres, Madueke, Eze, Odegaard playing key roles (all often inconsistent or underwhelming), supplemented by real consistent quality with the likes of Saka and Rice along with the league’s best defence.
Meanwhile we have the single best creator in the league who, if he was younger, would probably be going for £150+ million. Mainoo would likely go for over £100 million. As for the rest of our attack - there’s no way I’d be swapping our other attacking players for Arsenal’s. It’s our new midfield which is yet unproven and obviously the defence which is behind theirs.
So exactly like I said, if you have a deep and balanced enough squad along with some real individual quality, players like Tielemans and Santos can absolutely be part of a title challenging team. And I’m not saying we’re definitely there yet, but we are objectively a lot closer than we were before.
Yeah, I think Bruno is the only one that falls in that top bracket for us.
Exactly, 2 CBs, a DM and maybe a RW (probably not for me), would be the best in the league - maybe even the GK!. We are no where near that level of quality in our ranks. Liverpool always had about 3 as best in the league too.
I just don't see the real individual quality players we're supplementing, apart from Bruno. So that's where I think we're missing a trick. I think you think we need more of those players anyway, so was just a bit confused what you were getting at.
What if the funds aren't there for those real individual quality players at the moment. How are you gonna get around the issue then?
Then you have to buy what you deem the best potential on the market and accept they'll need some time to develop. If you're buying that level down of quality, you'll have to wait to be challenging anyway. You may as well wait while some of the players develop with you.
I'm surprised we have not been linked with Garner, we should have never sold him but right now he would be ideal
He'd cost a pretty penny, and I doubt United want to go down the Pogba route of signing someone who they let go for free/cheap.
Surely we could have stopped him signing a new contract if we made it clear we were interested in him early enough but suspect we were dreaming of anderson
if our budget is around the 30mil mark then surely Sangare looks the best option.
Just like with Wellbeck if we had any interest at all in bringing him back, we would have asked him not to sign a new deal with his club.
Agreed. You need to have like 3 or 4 players who it can be debated are world class to win a league. Arsenal this last year had Raya, Rice, Saka, Saliba and Gabriel.
As it is, we only have Bruno. That's particularly why I wanted Tchouameni and Fernandes this summer. One who it could be argued is world class and another with the potential for it. But we'll see how it shakes out.
When he signed that new contract was around the time Amorim was still here so he wouldn't have been in our plans and it's too late now as he'd cost too much.
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