Honestly, i think Zouma is pretty solid. He doesn't have as many mistakes imo as Sanchez and i'm a little sad we're looking to get rid. He lacked a bit of confidence intially but he has grown into a more solid defender (and from what i hear the everton fans were really happy with him too).
He is an upgrade on Sanchez. Trouble is (sadly) that really isn't a very high bar. I can honestly count Sanchez' solid, heart-attack-free performances on 2 hands with perhaps the help of a few toes. He's been here 4 years now without much discernible signs of improvement - and that was with prime Vertonghen and Alderweireld to learn from in his first 2 years. We don't just need an upgrade on Sanchez and Dier (who btw is even worse). We need a complete overhaul.
For me the annoying thing is that Sanchez is the CB we need to move on as he would bring in a higher fee due to being younger and an international regular, yet Dier is the CB we need to get rid of
I'd prefer it if we were to loan him out and bring in another journeyman, to be honest. He needs to play regularly. Grab David Button from West Brom for a minimal fee and we'd have a HG and CG 3rd choice who's played plenty of football, albeit not much at the top level. Alternatively, we could go for the weird name coincidence and pick up Jamal Blackman on a free. He spent about 300 years at Chelsea getting loaned out to all and sundry, but his contract expired in the summer.
Think it depends on if the club feels he has a genuine future here. 22 now, young for a keeper of course but he only has a year left on his deal, so if they feel he has a future then a loan and a new contract would make sense, if they're gonna let him go next summer then keeping him around as 3rd choice is probably more likely.
Totally agree mate. Ally Gold also recently spoke about Whiteman and said it's difficult for young keepers who go out on loan getting regular starts. Who knows if Hugo does leave next summer Whiteman could be Gollini's back up. Hes very highly rated by the club.
Romero Watch Oh buggeration... First of all, the last 2-3 days have been a fine demonstration of the issue with the blue ticked ITKs like Romano and Di Marzio as their stories bend and twist with the wind, as a couple of days ago Romano was confidently claiming that Atalanta had accepted our base fee for Romero and we were thrashing out the add-ons and bonuses to reach the €55m figure they wanted, then yesterday evening there was a sudden switch to Romano saying we instead were going to drop all interest in Romero as we were not willing to pay €55m and were looking to get Milenkovic & Tomiyasu signed up PDQ, and now we've flipped again with Calcio Mercato reporting we have bid €55m, a few Tier 4 or 5 sites are running "Player X wants to join Club Y and doesn't want Club Z to get in the way" headlines, and Di Marzio saying that Atalanta are lining up Merih Demiral as Romero's replacement (although we're supposed to forget how, a week or so, Di Marzio was claiming that Sven Botman was tabbed to replace Romero), and Gianluigi Longari is throwing Barca into the mix as if they have €55m to hand and those registration and salary cap issues they currently have don't exist Anyone else reaching for a drink at this point? Rando Round Up Sky Italia (I should probably stop here...) claim that we're looking to sign Georgian left winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia from Rubin Kazan, with a €20m fee being bandied about The Torygraph, meanwhile, report we're looking at Crotone's 29 year-old Nigerian striker Simeon Nwankwo (aka Simi) after he scored 20 goals in Serie A for relegated Crotone And then the Daily Wail are claiming we've offered £1m + Kion Etete for Northampton striker Caleb Chukwuemeka, who I mentioned a few days ago, which definitely sounds like a real offer for a 19 year old League Two striker in the last year of his contract...
The obvious question for this season is who our progressive CB will be Looking at our CB targets and the CBs we expect to remain at the club beyond the summer all of them fit into a similar mold of short passes to get the ball moving out from the back but none will drive up the pitch with the ball or ping a 30+ yarder to set off a quick counter, and while I am guessing that Skipp and Hojbjerg will be open for passes out the back to negate some of this, as we found last season when our CBs were instructed to not be progressive they got hemmed in an awful lot
So this counts as Tier 1, right? Also, so much for the various headlines about Hitchen being livid about Paratici coming in above him...