Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

The problem with our CBs is the balance of what we need is clearly off

Senior CBs: Toby, Dier, Sanchez
Young CBs to break through: Tanganga, Rodon (and Foyth, if Villarreal can't pony up the fee to make his loan permanent)
Youth CBs with potential: Eyoma, Paskotsi, Fagan-Walcott*, Okedina

The issue is that we're saying that Tanganga/Rodon/Foyth are raw talents who need games to get the mistakes out of their systems, the problem is that we're also saying we need a senior CB who doesn't have a mistake or two in their systems as, while we can forgive Tanganga, Rodon or Paskotsi if they make an error, we can't when Dier or Sanchez make the same error (while Foyth is somewhere between the two at this point)

Personally I think, of our senior CBs, Sanchez is doing the best to justify their remaining at the club because, while he does still have mistakes in his system, he has been putting in the work lately to prove he can contribute to the team, while Dier continues to undermine the team with his catastrophic lapses in judgment

On the subject of Ramos, here's a thought: as well as speaking Spanish (obviously) Ramos' English is pretty good, which means he could communicate with Tanganga or Rodon in English, Sanchez in either, or Foyth in Spanish (as, IIRC, Foyth had to learn English on the job after we signed him, hence when he played he usually had either Sanchez or Gazzaniga within earshot for communication)

 

Atleti (amongst a couple others) supposedly want Winks for circa £15m-£20m.

Always knew there was a reason I liked Simeone.

 

Your crap is expensive

 

So which team are we going to pay English tax to in order to meet our bare minimum HG requirements if we sell Winks or Dele this summer?

Funny how that question always seems to get ignored, isn't it?

 

I saw somebody describe Danny Rose as a club legend on Twitter a day or two ago and bemoan how the club have got tired of his crap and are letting him go for £0.00 in the summer - mainly as he torpedoed at least one move last summer and another in January

I mean, really, I know the term "world class" was overused to the point of being meaningless when it was used to describe Alan Shearer or Robbie Fowler over twenty years ago, but now we're calling people club legends for being good for a couple of seasons and a screamer in the NLD? By that logic, David Bentley is halfway to legend status

 

Shearer was world class. He's the leading Premier League goalscorer of all time, despite spending most of his career at Newcastle.

 

Shearer certainly wasn't, as he was regularly found out in European and international football because if he played against a halfway decent side that wasn't in the middle of either an almighty internal squabble (i.e. Holland at Euro 96) or starting a rebuild two years too late (Germany at Euro 2000) the only chance he had of scoring was with a penalty he was reasonably likely to have won himself

If Barren Dent could get away with elbowing players like Shearer did, he'd have similar scoring stats

 

I'll have a pint of what your drinking tonight - Shearer may have fouled and kicked a lot of people, he was also an excellent finisher and scorer of all sorts of goals - certainly not a 1 trick pony a la Bent, and playing with Shearer in your side was never like playing with 10 men.

And in case your wondering IMO Sandra wasn't in Shearers league either

 

Playing with Shearer absolutely was like playing with ten men, especially the period where he couldn't score for England which revealed he wasn't useful for anything else

Also, saying somebody scored a lot of goals in the Premier League isn't proof of quality, considering Andy Cole is currently the third-highest scorer in Premier League history and, as things stand, he's going to remain in the top five for a good 3-4 years to come

 

CB Watch
La Razon report that we're looking to sign Sevilla CB (duh...) Diego Carlos, with Davinson Sanchez headed in the opposite direction in a bid to work around his €75m release clause

Honestly, I hope this isn't true - not because I'm stanning Sanchez, but because Carlos doesn't seem like a CB we should be going all out for considering he failed to make the grade at Porto and was moved on to Estoril Praia, moved to Nantes in 2016, and then Sevilla in 2019, meaning he's currently 28 and is effectively being rated by his performances at Sevilla, which immediately beg the question who at Sevilla is making him look good, to which the obvious answers are Jules Kounde and their solid midfield three of Joan Jordan, Ivan Rakitic and Fernando Reges

:::EDIT:::

Add to that how Sevilla fans hardly think that Carlos is that good, as he makes a lot of rash challenges and has conceded a few penalties this season, meaning if this deal did happen we'd be swapping Sanchez for a Brazilian Dier

Lower League Rando Watch
Our scouts were reportedly at the Reading vs Barnsley match last Friday, and 2 + 2 journalism means that they were most likely looking at reading's attacking midfielder/winger Michael Olise (who was being linked with us prior to the January window) and Barnsley striker Daryl Dike, who is on loan to them from Orlando City

Olise is certainly a player we should look at, if his £8m release clause is still active, as he's the sort of deal we seem to have forgotten how to make in recent years, and it has to be said that Dike is proving to be a pretty effective striker at Championship level with 7 goals in 13 games so could be a useful player to have - although the obvious counterpoint can be summed up as follows: Troy Parrott, Dane Scarlett, Kion Etete, and while we are likely to be loaning at least one and probably more like two of them out next season, there's a point where stockpiling young strikers and never using them just looks bad

 

Fair enough you don't like him, and I am not here to argue (though I am taking up a contrary position on the subject!), now if you had compared Cole to Bent I could see the comparison, but I always thought that Shearer defended from the front and worked hard for his team, something I never thought that you could accuse Bent of doing.

Fortunately his barren period for England did come during a non qualifying period in the run up to Euro 96, and in my opinion he played well at the tournament scoring in 3 of our 5 matches.

I get the impression that we won't agree on this so I will leave it there. But can I ask if strikers are not judged on the number of goals they score what is the best measure of their performance?

 

This is the thing with strikers: judging them by goals alone is what cause Comolli to spunk £16.5m on Barren Dent or Baldini to spend almost double that on Roberto Soldado, when it's the intangibles that make a player world class

For example, look at Roberto Baggio. He was never an out-and-out goalscorer as the teams he played for had somebody else for that (Ravanelli or Casiraghi at Juve, Weah at Milan, Fat Ronaldo or Vieri at Inter, and Schillacci, Casiraghi, Inzaghi or Vieri for Italy) yet there's no denying that he was world class not only because he was a player who would turn up at the exact moment they needed him to either score or create a goal when the rest of the team was finding new and exciting ways to not do that, but it has to be said the entirety of Italian football has been trying to replace him for over twenty years with only Alessandro Del Piero coming close to doing that, while in comparison nobody has ever said Vialli, Ravanelli, Schilacci or Casiraghi were world class, and I'd certainly chuck Inzaghi in there as well given how poorly he timed his runs that he was offside more often than he was tonking it in

In comparison, look how easily football moved on from Alan Shearer, not just how the Premier League was moving on from forwards such as him while he was still playing with the likes of Henry, Bergkamp etc, but the England team didn't seem to miss him either when he was out the door - and that's actually out the door, as opposed to threatening to quit the England team to get the Premier League to reverse a yellow card suspension, which makes him a world class ****er

 

Son, Aguero, Kane, Bale? Yeah, alright...

 

r/soccer Porn Watch
Foot Mercato are linking us with another Monster Energy Dusseldorf player, namely Christopher Nkunku

Now obviously this sounds too good to be true, a player capable of playing as both an AM or a CM or even filling in up top who chips in with his share of goals and can move the ball at pace at his feet which is a drastic improvement on Sissoko. And here's the problem: it probably is, given he's a Pini Zahavi client contracted until 2024, so if the transfer fee doesn't screw us over the agent's fee definitely will

CB Watch
We've also been linked with signing Napoli CB Nikola Maksimovic on a free transfer this summer, which seems like the cheapest possible alternative to paying for a Skriniar or Milenkovic as he's both older than either (Maksimovic is 29, while Skriniar is 26 and Milenkovic 23) and simply doesn't have the qualities of Skriniar or potential of Milenkovic, meaning I'm getting Federico Fazio flashbacks here

Even as a stopgap I'm not convinced, as he'll be 30 next summer so if we do bring him in while waiting for the contracts of better options to tick down by a year or expire, we won't be making off like bandits if we do move him on

 

Just seen this

Wow, 260 PL goals and you’re comparing him to Darren Bent

 

Useless striker mate, all he did was score goals where ever he went

 

I understand what Croydon saying...surely there is more to a strikers game than popping the ball into the net. We all agree on that because I know everyone thinks and rightly so that Darren Bent was ****.

however I can’t recall if Shearer was affective off the ball like for example Kane is. I do recall Shearer scoring some blockbusters though from a fair distance and Darren Bent can only dream of them type of finishes. From that I suspect Shearer dropped a bit deeper and did more in his 90 minutes than to score but I can’t really recall.

Any of you think the Iranian striker Ali Diea was world class? bagged 109 goals in 139 games at international level...was he world class? I never heard him mentioned under that term...I could be wrong.

 

In reply to Ali Diea question - No - nobody is saying he was world class as the majority of his international goals were scored in Asia and unfortunately the quality of the opposition does not lend itself to that terminology though he was clearly very accomplished at the level that he played.

Shearer was not in Kane (or Baggios) class as an all round footballer. But he knew where the goal was at his peak for Blackburn he scored 112 goals in 138 games thats brilliant in anyones book an in one of the toughest leagues in world football. He won the league title with Blackburn and before people jump in say that Jack Walker was the first person to buy the league (and he did fund them significantly) - But this was Blackburns first choice team - Flowers, Berg, Warhurst, Hendrie, Le Saux, Batty, Sherwood Ripley, Wilcox, Shearer and Sutton - All good pros but hardly packed with world class talent. But Wilcox and Ripley new where to put the ball for Shearer and Sutton to score and very effective it was.

Shearer then scored a goal every 2 matches in a 10 year spell at Newcastle where he played in some good teams and some not so good teams.

He is not a great all rounder but if you looking for a bloke to put the ball in the net there were few better.

 

That’s HB’s point no?

that he could put it in the back of the net like Bent but wasn’t a great all rounder like Bent aswell and therefore can’t be classed as world class.

on the other hand if it’s about just numbers then Ali Diea is right up there too? For every Malaysia XI Diea scored against, Shearer scored against fodder like Botlon I bet.

Just playing Devil’s advocate tbh in order to establish the criteria for world class. I guess ultimately you have to consider everything, the quality of oppo, the level of the game you are playing at and of course the raw numbers.

 

Absolutely - its Horses for courses too and depends what you want from your CF, is you want him to be a strong target man who will bully defenders or you play with wingers who get the ball into the box early then a Shearer type CF is what you need. He is not so good if you want him to link the play or drop off to make to space for a midfielder running from deep.

To defend Bent (not a phrase I use often), Shearer couldn't play like him either. If you want to sit deep, leave one up and hit him over the top Bent was your man, he is certainly not the worst forward I have seen in a Spurs shirt but he is a long way down the list of the best ones.

World class is just a difficult criteria to establish - personally I think that its an overused phrase to my mind be deemed world class you would have to be one of the best 2 or 3 in your position at the time so that in the unlikely event of a test match between the Earth and Mars you would be selected for the earth squad - Shearer was never one of the best 4 forwards in world football so fails in my criteria. (as does Ali Diea) .......(and Darren Bent)