I think we all know by now Geebs!
Declan Rice
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Is it not the case that's he hasn't actually been named?
Not really sure why this one isn't under caf embargoe considering we're told not to talk about Greenwood.
Think something like "avid Bissouma hater" should be added to @golden_blunder 's tagline
He’s on bail.
Obviously we don’t know the details but there is of course a spectrum. Greenwood has immediately been taken out of commission, dropped by his sponsors etc all while not being convicted of anything, while Bissouma has continued playing and was also subject of transfer negotiations with Villa last month (which would suggest to me that even in the very worst case, he isn’t facing jail). It’s unfair to apply a Bissouma = Greenwood approach at this stage.
Despite all of that, I was only pulling Geebs legs regarding him, I knew he’d correct us!
Great player.
If he was the difference between us being 2nd or 1st, or the difference between us losing a champions league final and winning it by all means pay the 100 mil. But for a club that needs to improve a good number of areas including needing multiple players for the midfield, I would be against spending north of 70 mil for him.
Multiple teams including pool, city, leicester, Brighton have shown you can find very good cdm/holding mids for less than 50mil. Exceptional ones like Kante are hard to find, good ones like rodri, fabinho, bissouma, ndidi, gueye etc are not as rare as we think. So we should focuse on buying young to mid 20s players for less than 50mil until we are in a place where we need that final 1 or 2 piece of the puzzle.
If he was the difference between us being 2nd or 1st, or the difference between us losing a champions league final and winning it by all means pay the 100 mil. But for a club that needs to improve a good number of areas including needing multiple players for the midfield, I would be against spending north of 70 mil for him.
Multiple teams including pool, city, leicester, Brighton have shown you can find very good cdm/holding mids for less than 50mil. Exceptional ones like Kante are hard to find, good ones like rodri, fabinho, bissouma, ndidi, gueye etc are not as rare as we think. So we should focuse on buying young to mid 20s players for less than 50mil until we are in a place where we need that final 1 or 2 piece of the puzzle.
Nah, get Rice.
People have kept applying this logic on behalf of the club but we have broken a number of transfer records and have always strengthened other areas. Suddenly there is this panic that we will ‘blow our whole budget’ on Rice. Pretty sure we bought Veron and Van Nistelrooy in the same window. We broke the transfer record on Di Maria, and he was one of fecking 6 signings in that window. We broke it again on Pogba and bought in Zlatan, Mkhitaryan and Bailly in the same window. We spent £80m on Maguire and bought AWB and James in the same window.
There is nothing to suggest that if we pursue Rice this summer that we will not sign anyone else.
Jesus wept. He’s a dull and tidy defensive midfielder for a team that will most likely finish 7th or 8th this season. A defensive team with a rigid counter-attacking formation, a perfect setup for such a player to look steady for 90 minutes. He’s not world-class, neither West Ham or England are anywhere close to giving us an indication of his ability as such as they are a few levels behind the top teams. He is obviously a very good player, but calling him world-class is just silly. Odds are he will join a bigger club and suddenly look a bit more average, as his technical side will be challenged just like with Harry Maguire. All the same things were said about him when he went from a smaller club to a bigger one, then his obvious lack of pace and movement was highlighted at once. Same will probably happen to Rice, his lack of register will be revealed and the 100M will look daft. You simply do not pay 100M for a slow and big player like him when top football is so quick and technical.
Well yes. I meant if he's cleared.
There’d certainly be a cost! Not just financial
For every maguire there’s a Jordan Henderson to balance your argument
My first choice signing along that french kid this summer. But I still dont think we should spend £100 mill on him. If we spend £100 mill on Rice and lose Pogba, we will be complaining that we need another Pogba next summer.
I do think there are good options out there. One would be to replace Bailly/Jones with a really good CB and play with three at the back more often. Instead of spending £100 mill on Rice we could then spend £30 mill om Haidara/Tielesman or similar. Might even give us funds to compete for Bellingham next summer. It would also give us abit of time to wait for James Garner who is really not that different from Rice. More of a talent on the ball, less mature off the ball, in my opinion.
I have been a big fan of Rice since I first saw him, but spending £100 mill just dont seem sensible in my opinion.
I do think there are good options out there. One would be to replace Bailly/Jones with a really good CB and play with three at the back more often. Instead of spending £100 mill on Rice we could then spend £30 mill om Haidara/Tielesman or similar. Might even give us funds to compete for Bellingham next summer. It would also give us abit of time to wait for James Garner who is really not that different from Rice. More of a talent on the ball, less mature off the ball, in my opinion.
I have been a big fan of Rice since I first saw him, but spending £100 mill just dont seem sensible in my opinion.
West Ham were third in PL goals scored in 2021 I think.
Joint 6th with Leeds on 62 goals scored.
Behind :
Man City - 83
Man United - 73
Liverpool - 68
Leicester - 68
Tottenham - 68
Leeds - 62
West Ham - 62
Not bad, they do play defensive football though. Rice is in a system that suits him perfectly.
The people calling him a Roy Keane regen - did you see his celebration the other day? Can you imagine Keano doing that?
I mean, this is something say about players a lot on here. Isn’t that the idea of football? I think because we have done our best to go against that trend of playing to the strengths of our players we have almost made this a slight!Joint 6th with Leeds on 62 goals scored.
Behind :
Man City - 83
Man United - 73
Liverpool - 68
Leicester - 68
Tottenham - 68
Leeds - 62
West Ham - 62
Not bad, they do play defensive football though. Rice is in a system that suits him perfectly.
The people calling him a Roy Keane regen - did you see his celebration the other day? Can you imagine Keano doing that?
And as for your question, not a million years!! There was that video of him dancing on FIFA last year that caused some laughs though! I do think they have a lot of similarities as both players and leaders though.
Garner is totally different from rice
He might be. Like Carrick was different to Keane, or Fabinho is very different from Rodri. But there is also similarities in what they will provide to their team. Garner, right now, plays a bit further up the pitch. He will not in a few years. He is a DM, that is for certain.
I would prefer to have just one of them in a team, and I am very confident that in time Garner will become a great DM.
Absolutely.The people calling him a Roy Keane regen - did you see his celebration the other day? Can you imagine Keano doing that?
£100 mill on Rice ? not sure he is worthy of that price tag.
Forest fan I spoke didn’t think Garner is a holding midfielder but actually box to box.
I think he’s saying that like carrick and Keane it’s something that he could develop into. Which is fine,’possibly he will.
But we need one now, not in 5 years time
Id pay it if he drop kicked zouma across the room
My worry if we bring in Rice is that Fred/McTominay will play next to him, and that we will be unable to bring in something else we need. I could see us signing Rice, a striker and maybe replace Bailly.
If we dont sign Rice, but someone cheaper, we could probably sign a midfielder (like Haidara, Ward-Prowse, Tielemans), a better CB, a striker and maybe even a RW.
In my opinion, it could look a little like this
DDG
Lindelof/Maguire - Varane - Akanji
Dalot - JWP - Bruno - Shaw
Raphinha - Haller - Sancho
Squad: Heaton (?), AWB, Maguire/Lindelof, Telles, Fred, McT, Mejbri, Rashford, Elanga, Ronaldo
vs
DDG
Dalot - Varane - Akanji - Shaw
Rice
McT - Bruno
Rashford - Haller - Sancho
And I think I prefer the first case.
*For the record, I’m not saying we will sign either of these. They are just ment as examples. Put in Haidara or Tielesman for JWP or Nkunku for Raphinha or Darwin Nunez, DCL for Haller (who probably would only be an option if ETH came in). I also think there will be many good options at CB if we are looking to replace Bailly.
(In my opinion, a perfect summer would be Gvardiol, Nkunku, JWP or Haidara and some sort of solution for the striker position. Probably close to £200 mill. Not likely, but maybe we could raise a few mill from sales and reduce or wages quite a bit?)
In summary, my point is, with all these players leaving, even Pogba, we probably need five new players. That will be very difficult if we spend £100 mill on Rice.
If we dont sign Rice, but someone cheaper, we could probably sign a midfielder (like Haidara, Ward-Prowse, Tielemans), a better CB, a striker and maybe even a RW.
In my opinion, it could look a little like this
DDG
Lindelof/Maguire - Varane - Akanji
Dalot - JWP - Bruno - Shaw
Raphinha - Haller - Sancho
Squad: Heaton (?), AWB, Maguire/Lindelof, Telles, Fred, McT, Mejbri, Rashford, Elanga, Ronaldo
vs
DDG
Dalot - Varane - Akanji - Shaw
Rice
McT - Bruno
Rashford - Haller - Sancho
And I think I prefer the first case.
*For the record, I’m not saying we will sign either of these. They are just ment as examples. Put in Haidara or Tielesman for JWP or Nkunku for Raphinha or Darwin Nunez, DCL for Haller (who probably would only be an option if ETH came in). I also think there will be many good options at CB if we are looking to replace Bailly.
(In my opinion, a perfect summer would be Gvardiol, Nkunku, JWP or Haidara and some sort of solution for the striker position. Probably close to £200 mill. Not likely, but maybe we could raise a few mill from sales and reduce or wages quite a bit?)
In summary, my point is, with all these players leaving, even Pogba, we probably need five new players. That will be very difficult if we spend £100 mill on Rice.
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Matt Law thinks West Ham will sell for £80m and Tuchel would like the player in his team. Not sure Chelsea would pay the £80m though.
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Waste of a money for 80m.
The same reason why Neymar cost 220m+ and the record for a defensive midfielder is Rodri at around 75m. Attackers are worth a lot more in transfer market.
Need to go all in. 80M is a bargain for him. Best young DM in the world by far.
Pretty obvious he wants to go to Chelsea and if I were him I'd want to go to Chelsea too.
We shouldn't bother wasting time pursuing him.
We shouldn't bother wasting time pursuing him.
Probably the type of character we need in the squad. He may not be worth the price but we put up the cash for Maguire for the same reason. At least Rice is a better age and would get more years out of him
No it isn't, you're paying an absolute premium. Kante, Fernandinho and Fabinho were bargains. Paying £80m for Rice is not.
He absolutely is a bargain by the virtue of being just 23 and already bossing the midfield in the toughest league in the world. He can play for us for 8-10 years.
I don't know what world you live in to think £80m is a bargain.
That is top dollar not a bargain.
You can say it until you’re blue in the face but it objectively is not a bargain, it’s more than 100% of most club’s transfer budget. He’s not even a top 5 midfielder in the league. It’s a ludicrous fee.
Do you find him to be a top 5 cdm of the league?
If we pay insane money for him he will be next Harry Maguire. For the price quoted, we should stay away.
He’s a top 5 CDM but the CDMs better than him all cost a hell of a lot less. There’s value in the market, we just need to exploit the market better.
How would you feel if we decided to buy Rice only after we fill our gaps first?
Say we postpone Rice to United until the 2023 january/summer window - and we first concentrate on replacing the creative CM in our team due to Pogba leaving, a new ST and possibly a RB.
Say we go for all those things first and only then go for Rice when his value won't effect our other transfers or future businesses.
How would you feel then?
£30M for 28 year old player from Ukrainian League in 2013 wasn't a bargain.
I see both sides of the argument regarding Rice. I rate him highly and we are crying out for a genuine leader, he would be not be a bad price if he was to be here for 10 years. On the other hand we need a lot of players in the summer and if we were to get a cheaper alternative and strengthen other parts of the team I'd probably prefer that.
If Rice is available for 40m then it's a no brainer.
We've just made an english player who was excelling at another top 8 club the most expensive player in their position. Suddenly the pressure and expectations are ramped up and they might not take it well either.
Paying £80m will be a huge outlay and people will expect a lot more from him than just a few sideways passes and good interceptions.
I suspect if we hire a coach that likes to play 4-3-3 properly, they'll know what they're looking for and will find an alternative at a much better value.
Rice isn't the only CDM in the world that's for sure. A good solid player no doubt, but nothing that will revolutionise the side.
In that scenario, I'd be more open to the idea, still not for £80m. The issue for me being that we categorically need a good DM this upcoming window, so signing everything else except a DM then signing one later on just makes for an unbalanced squad in my eyes, and will lead to another season similar to this one.
In hindsight it turned out to be fantastic, which is what good scouting can do for you.
I've been thinking recently maybe it's best we go for the cheaper options like the free transfers and guys from Ligue 1 first so we can cover the gaps in our squad.
Let's see if we were able to get lucky and get players that were able to settle in the PL - if not we go for someone who has been doing well already there like Rice for the bigger price afterwards.
For me, what I like about Rice is nothing to do with things like interceptions, leadership or passing - its simply the way he stops the passing lanes for the opposition. I genuinely feel that he can make the opposition really struggle to get a shot in on goal for a long time during a match. To me it feels almost like a cheat code with how well he does it and reads the game.
I personally don't see this link to Maguire people make - a player Leicester didn't rate all that high and wasn't anywhere near the player Rice is from 22-23.
Anyway, I don't feel like it's right buying him for 80 mil only for half the fan base to start questioning why he isn't playing like Pogba and being our creative presence - when he never is that player.
I'm getting more open to buying Rice later than now, because some don't see what he brings that some other CDM's don't. I think he is a very specialised type of player, and for that maybe it's best we go for him only when we as a team need him - or when someone like our future deep lying playmaker may need him.
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