Summer 2019 Transfer Thread

[Lycan]

Yes, but you wouldn't go out and sign a player capable of playing at centre half and central midfield who fits in the sweet spot between being not as good as Leander Dendoncker, but better than Romain Saiss. There's zero value in that.

To get into our first XI you have to be seriously talented or be an exact fit for our system as Doherty and Coady are. RCB is probably the one exception, but Benno really hasn't let us down much. If we want Boly's right sided equivalent, that is likely to fit into one of the three categories I mentioned.

Theo Walcott would be of far more use to us than any of Cavaleiro, Costa or Traore. I do not want us to sign him.

We can keep recruiting the way we have been for a long time before there's no room to improve. We can clearly find players of Jonny/Dendoncker's quality or better because, you know, we signed them before, relatively cheaply, and with no favours from Uncle Jorge.

There's room in this squad for 7-8 players of similar quality to what we already have (more if/when players we would rather hold on to leave) before it starts getting too bloated. After that we start needing to spend mega £ or get lucky and pull a João Félix type talent out of nowhere.

I don't know why you mentioned Walcott, in no way am I suggesting we buy players worse than what we already have (unless they have potential to progress of course).

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Walcott is definitely better than our three back up forwards as he can actually score goals from out wide and can actually play up front, after a fashion. So an improvement on where we currently are as a squad, which is what you want us to do without necessarily touching the starting XI much. But he wouldn't be desirable.

Jonny and Dendoncker cost us £27m between them! And we've got another year's market inflation to factor in. Jonny was also one where Atletico saw the opportunity to flip him for a quick profit due to his contract situation at Celta, you aren't going to get that happen every year.

 

[Lycan]

Walcott is definitely better than our three back up forwards as he can actually score goals from out wide and can actually play up front, after a fashion. So an improvement on where we currently are as a squad, which is what you want us to do without necessarily touching the starting XI much. But he wouldn't be desirable.

Jonny and Dendoncker cost us £27m between them! And we've got another year's market inflation to factor in. Jonny was also one where Atletico saw the opportunity to flip him for a quick profit due to his contract situation at Celta, you aren't going to get that happen every year.

I didn't say anything about not touching the starting XI. Anyone we sign should be capable of at the very least competing with their teammates for positions. One of our biggest problems this season is that there's such a big gap in quality between players competing for the same position. Not a surprise really considering how quickly this squad has been assembled. That's the exact point I'm making though, we can continue recruiting this way for a long time before we need to change our way of thinking and start spending the kind of money some are expecting us to spend this summer.

£27M isn't a lot on 2 players of their quality. I'd be surprised if we spent less than, say, £75M this summer (not including making Raúl permanent). That's what? 4, maybe 5 players of (hopefully) similar quality. I don't think we'd be overcrowding the squad with that number of high quality additions, we wouldn't be spending more than we can afford

 

[PuntsWolf]

Obviously you don’t want to do that and we don’t want to sign “backup”. However at the moment we have jumped so quickly we are very short of quality beyond the first 11.

Normally you’d have a squad year in year out and slowly sign a Player, pushing the current guy into the squad and sell the left overs. We currently barely have a squad, and don’t have any leftovers.

In a hypothetical world where we could sign clones of players, if we could have two of Donk, Raul, Jota, Moutinho, and Doc we make the top 4 next year for me.

Edit - Lycan has already said what I’m saying in response to DW

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I didn't say anything about not touching the starting XI. Anyone we sign should be capable of at the very least competing with their teammates for positions. One of our biggest problems this season is that there's such a big gap in quality between players competing for the same position. Not a surprise really considering how quickly this squad has been assembled. That's the exact point I'm making though, we can continue recruiting this way for a long time before we need to change our way of thinking and start spending the kind of money some are expecting us to spend this summer.

£27M isn't a lot on 2 players of their quality. I'd be surprised if we spent less than, say, £75M this summer (not including making Raúl permanent). That's what? 4, maybe 5 players of (hopefully) similar quality. I don't think we'd be overcrowding the squad with that number of high quality additions, we wouldn't be spending more than we can afford

Ask yourself what we'd want if Fosun suddenly decided one of Jota or Raul needed to go for whatever reason. £60m each? More?

You want someone who can genuinely push them, or at least mean that there isn't a significant drop off in quality if they're missing...it's going to cost more than you think. I want Haller in an ideal world. He's going to cost at least £50m. Then you've got to pay the boy. And persuade him that he'll actually play.

 

[Lycan]

Obviously you don’t want to do that and we don’t want to sign “backup”. However at the moment we have jumped so quickly we are very short of quality beyond the first 11.

Normally you’d have a squad year in year out and slowly sign a Player, pushing the current guy into the squad and sell the left overs. We currently barely have a squad, and don’t have any leftovers.

In a hypothetical world where we could sign clones of players, if we could have two of Donk, Raul, Jota, Moutinho, and Doc we make the top 4 next year for me.

Edit - Lycan has already said what I’m saying in response to DW

Exactly this.

Although you wouldn't want clones, per se. You'd want players of a similar quality but with different characteristics. That's Nuno's 'idea' all over. One, perfectly balanced formation that every player knows and a squad of quality players with different abilities. Affect the game with changes of personnel, not tactics.

 

[Lycan]

Ask yourself what we'd want if Fosun suddenly decided one of Jota or Raul needed to go for whatever reason. £60m each? More?

You want someone who can genuinely push them, or at least mean that there isn't a significant drop off in quality if they're missing...it's going to cost more than you think. I want Haller in an ideal world. He's going to cost at least £50m. Then you've got to pay the boy. And persuade him that he'll actually play.

Yeah, probably about £60M for Jota now. We signed him for less than £15M last January though.

Of course in an ideal world you'd want to buy Haller straight away but unfortunately only the best teams in the world get to do that sort of thing. There are players of Haller's quality out there for a hell of a lot cheaper though. How much did Haller cost Frankfurt?

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

About €7m. We were linked with him while he was at Utrecht. But in our position at the time, would you have wanted to spend that much on a guy from the Eredivisie?

I'm not saying we can't work along the lines you're suggesting. It's going to be far from easy though. Especially on wages.

 

[Dinowolf]

Agree Moutinho is real quality and a joy to watch; Neves, we know how good he is.

But............

League goals from midfield 2018/19
Neves - 4 + 3 assists
Moutinho - 1 + 8 assists
Dendoncker (17 games) 1 + 0 assists
Saiss (19 games) - 2 + 0 assists

We need better for next season

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I'd say different rather than better. An option we can play against your likes of Brighton who won't ever attack.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

So just under 20 per cent of our goals from midfield. With over fifty per cent of the goal coming from forward players. As a split it isn’t abnormal.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Plus as we play 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 and have exclusively all season the goals and assists from Doherty should be included in the midfield stats. Same with Jonny. Looks a bit different then.

 

[Alan]

So just under 20 per cent of our goals from midfield. With over fifty per cent of the goal coming from forward players. As a split it isn’t abnormal.

Without actually wanting to do the work (I'm lazy), I'd guess it probably looks a little more abnormal if you break down by individual forward players. Two of our five/six forwards are responsible for, what, 90% of their goals?

 

[Boozad]

Compare the game time then it looks completely normal.

 

[PuntsWolf]

I wouldn’t say it was particularly normal when all of Neves’ are set pieces/ Pens and one of Saiss’ was when we was at CB. So 3 goals from CM all season when we have played 3 of them for over half of it isn’t great I don’t think, but is impossible to define what “normal” is because of systems, tactics etc.

It isn’t a problem necessarily, but to move to the next level we are going to need more goals from that area, particularly against deep lying teams who swamp your forwards.

 

[Tony Towner]

As Dan pointed out, it's not an issue for the majority of games given the way we set up and play. It is against the bus parkers when we need someone breaking beyond the forwards or threading a pass between the centre halves into them. I thought that could be MGW, but at the moment he's not there.

 

[Boozad]

Goals from midfielders this season:

Jorginho - 2
Matic - 1
Gundogan - 5
Fernandinho - 1
Keita - 3
Henderson - 1
Fabinho - 1
Torriera - 2
Xhaka - 4
Guendouzi - 1
Winks - 1
Dier - 2
Sissoko - 0
Barkley - 5
Kovacic - 0

Can’t be arsed to look for any more on my phone, but if Donck had had his shooting boots on he’d have outscored the lot. Neves is playing deeper and Moutinho runs the show from midfield. As standard CMs go we’re bang where we should be, if you want someone more attacking against the sit back sides it’s a formation change.

 

[The Bear]

Moutinho should probably get a couple more given his shooting ability. Neves too.

 

[Norman Deeley]

So Matt Doherty has outscored all those expensive midfielders. £100m man...

 

[lemonjelly]

Doherty is third on our list for the season. In fact, he's 1 behind Diogo isn't he?
30% of our goals coming from defenders when we don't play Pulisball is a good return.
We're an effective team. Donck is the main man at getting forwards and supporting Raul and Jota - he's always there, watch him. With a pre-season under his belt, he'll be scoring goals next season.
As Topny/Deutsch have stated, we need someone to unlock teams who have a very defensive mindset. This means either someone who is exceptional at intricate interplay (we've seen elements of that between Raul and Diogo, and including MGW, eg the cardiff goals), or some way of getting those we're playing to come out/play higher up the pitch.