Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Not Skilo?

 

Just throw him in...best way

 

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I saw this on another site and it's pretty representative of the fall off over the previous 3 seasons. Unfortunately, as the Dead Kennedys said, "We've got a bigger problem now."

MP continues to select him despite the fact that he's just not the same player any more. It's beyond time to move on...

 

I wouldn't be surprised if George Marsh started appearing in matchday squads soon, considering he's been training with the first team since August and was on the bench against the Scammers last week

 

Painful reading. Really is gutting to see what was once a top class CM just completely fall to pot. Why the club never brought in a CM over the summer I'll never know, it's already costing us due to a lack of inspiring performances in the position and now with Dembele out, it's just weakened what was already a weak choice of CMs. They better not piss about once the window opens, first week we have to have a CM come through that door.

 

Agree, but my initial thought was "yeah right!"

 

There's no chance that the club didn't know this. We made little effort to offer terms that he'd accept.

Possibly more worrying is what we knew about Big Vic. We were ready to entertain offers last summer. For me, that says that we knew he wasn't the player of 2016/17 any more. To know about those levels of decline about our 2 leading midfielders and get the Transfer Window so badly wrong is a shocking indictment of the management of the club.

This was when we knew that Winksy would have no pre-season after ankle surgery, Eric Dier was at the whole of the World Cup and Moussa Sissoko is Moussa Sissoko.

Whoever called the shots, called the wrong ones.

 

The cockup where we believed that Lyon not announcing they made NDombele's loan a permanent move meant he was still a viable target, only to discover they exercised the option months ago and just hadn't announced it (possibly to skirt Ligue 1's FFP rules) is the moment we went from looking to sign a key component in the side for several years to trying to find someone who could fill a gap in the squad for a season while we looked for the long-term alternative

From that moment on, our summer plans were ****ed

 

Asking Ndombele's agent probably didn't occur to anyone?

Also, there was a vague possibility that he might spark a mad scramble for his signature that we didn't win?

No possible alternatives available in the whole world of football?

We failed to identify targets that were available to us to buy and ballsed it up. I don't know whose fault it was. I'm tempted to think that it doesn't belong to just the one person, but we ended up putting our faith in 2 players that were never going to be at the level required and 3 others that had/have issues.

By November the thing's obviously ****ed, even to the most casual of observers. The worrying thing is that it was always the likely outcome and we walked straight into it.

 

I’m guessing they probably stopped collecting the stats this season......

 

Yeah I can't imagine it to be a good read if we saw this season's stats so far. He's even lost the "can't be tackled" attribute, a good number of times this season he's lost possession, a prime Dembele lost the ball like once a season, if that. Hate seeing how bad he's declined, seems like such a top bloke as well, rumours that he even said in the summer he won't sign for another Prem side because 'Spurs are his club', hence why Italy and China are/ were his likely destinations and not a move to a side less physically demanding as ours in the country.

 

One thing I do certainly believe is that we (along with several other clubs) approached the summer transfer window under the assumption that Jean Michael Seri would be at the heart of a transfer auction, not least because he was linked to Barca and Chelsea at various points last season, so with that in mind we looked to find a similar option who was flying under the radar - and that's what NDombele was

Then two things went wrong almost simultaneously: first there was how the plan to gazump NDombele at the end of his loan (like we did with Toby) failed due to the fact Lyon had triggered the option to make his loan permanent, meaning that instead of signing him for £35-30m from under Lyon's noses instead we'd have to be dealing with Lyon and paying £50m+, but in that time the presumed transfer auction for Seri never happened so Fulham managed to sign him without any rival bids.

So we had identified two players as Dembele replacements, but both of them signed for new clubs within a week of one another

 

Dembele should have been moved on and replaced in the summer. His decline has been visible for a while now.

 

What sort of player would people prefer to replace Dembele with, assuming that he's on the way out?
Someone similar or something a little different? Box-to-box or playmaker?

 

I'd go for a Kante-style player, as having someone who can speed up the transition between defence and attack would do a hell of a lot for us

 

It was from July this year and used to indicate that Mousa's departure wouldn't be that great a loss...someone should have told the club!

 

Indeed..... (thought the last set of stats was 17/18 so assumed it finished in May.)

 

Kante isnt really one to speed up attacks. Hes not technically that good but he can run with it at speed if theres space in front. Ask if to move it quickly and inventively or to play it out when pressed and hes not brilliant at it

 

The stats were compiled in July to reflect the significant drop in form that had already happened and that keeping him for a final season wasn't a good idea. The stats end in May 2018. The ones for this season are not suitable for family viewing!

 

Just like when we lost Modric, it's about finding the best possible player in my opinion, Dembele was nothing like Modric yet was a huge success, so it's now time to do similar.

If I was asked who specifically, Milinkovic-Savic would be top, second and third on my list, although N'Dombele, de Jong and Rabiot would also be most welcome. Failing all of those, would genuinely have Super Jack here, still stand by the idea that Poch could turn him into a star.