Porro Watch So either he's turned up to training (Record - yes, the Spanish one) or he's refused to turn up to training (Bruno Andrade) We've only gone and signed a bloody thought experiment
Talk about difficult to please. If Levy gets the deal done he gets no credit because he's only saving face (or something similar) but if he doesn't he's being Levy.
City won’t sign Porro as they have Rico Lewis and Pep has changed the system which is why they’re willing to let Cancelo go.
Yeah Conte doesn’t clearly fancy Spence at all. The bits in bold contradict each other, unless you’re not classing yourself as most football fans.
It is a completely factual statement that I am not most football fans so your comment is entirely wrong.
Conte doesn’t trust young players so I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on the idea that Spence is worse than Doherty or Emerson. As for being in the top 50, that’s probably too debatable with differing opinions on many different players but I think a more simplistic way of judging if a player is good enough or not is determining whether they are inside the best 6 (or the best 4) in their position in the Premier League. If you have an XI in which they would all be considered as one of the best 6 in their role then you should comfortably finish inside the top 6. We had that under Pochettino during 2015-2018 but nowadays we’ve had to rely on luckily having the best 1 at ST and LW to carry some of the players that would struggle to make the best 10, hence why our league positions had declined for 3 or 4 years on the trot until we broke that duck last season, right now it’s in the balance as to whether we can finish inside the top 6, it’s made harder that the usual top 1 at LW has had an awful season. I think there are probably four positions in our first XI that are well below the best six threshold.
This is an ongoing stream of ****e. First it was claimed that he didn't train, then he did, and now he definitely didn't. Sporting have said that he wasn't expected to and was given the day off. Not sure it's particularly relevant.
I'm not sure it's about age, so much as experience and demonstrated reliability. Spence is the same age as Sessegnon and he plays him pretty regularly, for example. He just prefers experienced, proven players and he's risk averse. I'm not sure why he thinks that demonstrated mediocrity is better than the unknown, though. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
And on it goes... A Bola sources claim Porro was given the day off as negotiations are ongoing, so it was decided it was best he not train as he'd be distracted
I wouldn't disagree but that doesn't necessarily mean that better players are available. If we can't sign Porro then signing the second best might not be the right thing to do
IIRC he's out of contract at the end of the season, so probably best all round if we get a sell-on clause inserted now
Surely if that’s the case and it’s Porro or nothing then the club should have wrapped this deal up early in the window.
I think when you consider the standard of three of our four senior wing backs then believing there isn’t better out there that’s obtainable would be unlikely. Southampton are bottom of the league and yet Walker-Peters is considerably better than Doherty and Emerson, it’s worrying that we have these level of players in our team when we’re looking to finish in the top four - and this goes back to my previous post about how the top 1 in ST and LW have had to carry players of this ilk for us to achieve top six finishes in recent seasons. I won’t pretend to say I’ve watched Porro loads because I haven’t, but if he’s the significant upgrade we hope he is then our chances of top four greatly improve because it’s one less player that the likes of Kane, Kulusevski, Bentancur etc currently have to carry.