Neves has only shown consistency in the Championship and has struggled in the top flight. He also has mobility issues which is a big worry for me with the way we want to play and press the opposition.
Rabiot I did like, but he preferred to play as the #8, which is where I assume he will be deployed by Juventus.
I understand the reservations about Longstaff due to the small sample size. But after having watched him against the likes of Man City and Chelsea, I would take the plunge and sign him. I personally don't think he'll cost £50m either.
I rate Neves higher than you do, I think he has some great qualities but I do agree that great mobility isn't one of them, but then Ole keeps using Matic and I wouldn't say Pogba or McTominay were ultra mobile either.
The thing is when we talked about Rabiot we thought we were going to play either the 4-4-2 diamond or 4-3-3, a system that required a lone #6 to sit at the base, but it seems Ole wants a double pivot with essentially two #8's, in that system Rabiot would have worked IMO.
Fair enough, to be honest in general I find it hard to have enthusiasm for English players not called Sancho as most of them bar the 2 that are unobtainable don't really impress me, I feel we don't produce the caliber of technical players that Germany, Spain and France do. At the end of the day if we buy him it'll be like Wan-Bissaka, I wouldn't hate it but I wouldn't be excited about it either.
Deal rising to 63 million? That's even more, so maybe you can't get someone for 50 million. It's not the fans job to judge potential signings, the scouts and manager think it's the player that's need who cares if he's played 5 or 555 games. I don't get how people who've probably not even watched him once have drawn an opinion on him?
I do not beleive the club have any further interest in him, seems to were looking at a deal around the 20 million mark, Newcastle made it clear that wasn't going to happen. Since then zero interest has been shown by the club, it's this thread won't die as people keep stating he's only played 9 games and isn't worth 50 million
The base fee is £55M, who knows if they'll ever get the bonuses, that's just £5M more than Newcastle want up front for Longstaff. If fans don't give opinions on signings and potential signings then the board would have no purpose, especially at this time of the year. I also didn't give an opinion on him, I personally don't see how anyone can have a definitive one with only 8 PL games under his belt, and that includes scouts, what he did at youth level is irrelevant. The thread wont die because our midfield is dogshite and he's the only CM we've been linked with for about the last 2 months, it's called desperation.