The Skipper

In what sense is Oscar better than Isco?

Yaya and Matic in midfield would be incredible. If we can't land our main CM targets Yaya would be an excellent option for like a season or two. Ballack-esque signing.

Would be an interesting bet to take IMO. Could be a Fabregas-esque signing. This guy was meant to be the top talent of his generation alongside Hazard and Neymar...

Why isn't he a Jose-type player?

What's so disrespectful about it? Schurrle especially did contribute quite a bit...

Marseille are my team in France, my family there are big supporters... Would be delighted with this, top top team.

It really isn't about spending big and lavishly. It's about spending smart. Just like what we've been doing over the last 2/3 seasons. I trust the board and Jose to get it right, yet again.

Still cannot believe Jose didn't give the lad a fair chance.

He does remind me a lot of Kaka, whether he has the same level of ability? Doubt it, but we'll see.

You're possibly right, but I honestly wasn't discussing who fits our system better. Simply stating who I thought was the better player. Pogba can be the better player in the long haul but he still has a lot to learn. The raw ability is there, he just needs to learn how to use it to its maximum. Thiago is already along those lines. The only thing that's really stopped Thiago are his injuries. He's also obviously a top talent himself.

So if he has another inconsistent season we can expect a famous Gilvorak rant on Oscar, yes?

You quantify it by watching games and looking at the player who's the most influential in possession and out of possession. He's the heartbeat of his team. Sets the tempo, is the proper playmaker of the team, recognises what spaces to infiltrate at the right time, makes the best decisions at the right time etc... Pogba doesn't do much of that yet. At Juve, Pirlo controls and sets the pace of the game for them. A controller is pretty interchangeable with playmaker. Think Xavi, Pirlo etc. I'm not advocating that we should buy Thiago btw, literally just stating that he's a better player because he sees the game a lot better than Pogba does atm. Pogba is still learning how to do that but it's just natural for Thiago.

Koke and Thiago are both very adaptable players (more so than Pogba IMO) so that is sort of irrelevant.

Well you can compare them because they're both CMs, albeit different types, but essentially apart from his physicality and stature, Pogba is behind Thiago in almost every sense at the moment. He cannot control a game like Thiago does.

Also... Different players but Thiago is definitely better than Pogba atm, not even questionable IMO.

That obviously goes without saying. Still not worth it at all. Pogba is a talent but I wouldn't like it if we spent anywhere the 70-80m fees being banded about. My point basically was that you can't really go about screaming how Koke isn't worth his buyout clause (50m or whatever it is) but then turn a blind eye for the overvaluation Pogba has been getting.

Pogba isn't worth anywhere near his reported fee either.

Willian is definitely a very good number 10 in our system.

I'm not saying we should get Green at all; he's not good enough. Someone like Begovic would be perfect. He's HG. We need to think long term wise as well - we could perhaps need an extra foreign spot in the future. It'd be good if we didn't waste it on our back up goalkeeper.

We need a decent HG GK. Can't be wasting foreign spots on a reserve GK.

I wasn't criticising Mo though, I was criticising the defending. Just relax a bit my friend!

If we sold Luis, I'd be happy with Coentrao as a replacement.

It was incredible. Such a good goal. I was too excited about Oscar's potential from that game and that is still his best CFC performance for me. That was 3 years ago and he hasn't actually reached those heights again. Had Godlo in his pocket and controlled the game completely. If he had that sort of performance in him consistently, you won't ever see me complain about the lad. It's because of that performance that I still have the slightest bit of hope in the guy. I've mostly given up on him though.

LMAO. Mo Salah fan club out in full force. It was a good finish but the defending was absolutely clownish, he's scored goals with a lot more merit during his time in Florence. Just calm down a bit people, bloody hell. Anything that's not praising Mo in here is automatically taken as something offensive.

Not more talent, but I do remember a few saying that his ceiling was higher than Eden's.