Ex-Wolf Watch

[C.L.D]

A rare Nuno L

 

[Lycan]

A rare Nuno L

It was Lage who had the chance to sign him permanently.

 

[YoungWolf]

Yeah Nuno wanted to sign him permanently. Lage supposedly turned down the chance to sign him that summer and then again in the January (which makes less sense to me because I’m sure he was an important Porto player by then)

 

[Del Woppio]

I think the Nuno L is not giving him more minutes, I don't think he'd have signed even we did make an acceptable bid.

That said, I don't think he'd be near the player is today if he came here at that time

 

[AndyWolves]

Common forum consensus that of the two RAN was who we needed more than Vitinha

 

[Tony Towner]

Yeah, I put it more on Nuno than anyone else. If he'd played him there'd have been a more compelling reason to sign him. He mismanaged both the MGW and Vitinha situations in his final months.

Lage may have been manager when we rejected the original option and also when Mendes approached us again in the January, but he had as much say on recruitment as me. Can't call him a patsy on the one hand and then blame him for this on the other.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

We were comfortable in mid table that Vitinha season too, there was no real reason not to play him.

However I really did think he was a nothing player, the only game I felt he look like he could be something special was Albion away.

None of this is helped by the fact it was the covid season though.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Didn't we mainly use him wide or as a sort of #10 though? Not as a deep lying CM.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Yeah because Joao and Neves were effectively in his position. Ot at least he could only play in his true position if one of those didn't.

 

[Lycan]

There's a Portuguese conspiracy theory that Lage was told not to sign him by Benfica as Porto were counting on the €20M fee and were in danger of being kicked out of the Champions League for failing FFP at the time.

 

[Alan]

I’m not sure there’s really any blame to be leveled justifiably. We played him a bit, he looked *okay*, clearly talented but not exactly influential. He didn’t show much to justify retaining him, IMO.

It’s a completely false equivalence to look at his success at PSG and say “oh wow look at what we’re missing”. He’s in a different league, at a club with massively different goals (realistically speaking), a massive talent delta over their domestic peers, and being coached by one of the most sorely overlooked managers in football.

There’s less than zero guarantee that he’d have developed into anything like he has done if he had stayed here.

 

[Lycan]

I’m not sure there’s really any blame to be leveled justifiably. We played him a bit, he looked *okay*, clearly talented but not exactly influential. He didn’t show much to justify retaining him, IMO.

It’s a completely false equivalence to look at his success at PSG and say “oh wow look at what we’re missing”. He’s in a different league, at a club with massively different goals (realistically speaking), a massive talent delta over their domestic peers, and being coached by one of the most sorely overlooked managers in football.

There’s less than zero guarantee that he’d have developed into anything like he has done if he had stayed here.

Come on. He's one of the best players in the world in his position. He's a generational talent. He would've succeeded anywhere.