Non-Chelsea Transfer Pub

[Iggy Doonican 4,186]

4 hours ago, Atomiswave said:

Thats a long ass kneck

Cockney rhyming slang for neck Gregory Peck so '' Fackin ell that Joe Hart's got some Gregory on im '' 

[Atomiswave 6,072]

1 hour ago, Iggy Doonican said:

Cockney rhyming slang for neck Gregory Peck so '' Fackin ell that Joe Hart's got some Gregory on im '' 

Quality mate

[OhForAGreavsie 5,892]

2 hours ago, Tomo said:

Mata wasn't the Modric alternative Meireles was.

Modric only has himself to blame that he didn't get the move, signing a 6 year extension (the previous summer) with no watertight clause was all levels of stupid.

Worked out OK for him in the end so, while I'm sure that was a lesson learned for his agent, it turned out to be a pretty painless one.

[Jase 43,479]

3 hours ago, Tomo said:

Modric only has himself to blame that he didn't get the move, signing a 6 year extension (the previous summer) with no watertight clause was all levels of stupid.

Signing a long term contract at a club obviously means "surrendering" their future to the club but one should never do so when Daniel Levy is the one in charge. 

[BlueLyon 9,359]

Besides the De Bruyne and Salah mistakes, not signing Modric and Alves given they were practicaly ours is dissapointing.

What could have been...

[ulsterchelsea 3,221]

4 minutes ago, BlueLyon said:

Besides the De Bruyne and Salah mistakes, not signing Modric and Alves given they were practicaly ours is dissapointing.

What could have been...

Aguero was on the hook too... What could have been

[King Kante 1,484]

Yeah, our transfer business between 08-12 was pretty shocking. In that time, we could've had Alves, Modrat, Kun, Ribery (we picked Malouda instead) and Neymar if it wasn't for a mixture of not ponying up/taking the bad option or having certain Cnut's f*ck us over. 

Instead we ended up with players like Yossi, Bosingwa, Ramires, Torres and Malouda instead. Some of those of course weren't awful, but what could've been.....

[Jase 43,479]

1 minute ago, King Kante said:

Yeah, our transfer business between 08-12 was pretty shocking. In that time, we could've had Alves, Modrat, Kun and Neymar if it wasn't for a mixture of not ponying up/taking the bad option or having certain Cnut's f*ck us over. 

Who is Modrat? 

On hindsight, am okay that we missed out on Alves and Neymar. We got Ivanovic and then Hazard. 

[King Kante 1,484]

3 minutes ago, Jason said:

Who is Modrat? 

On hindsight, am okay that we missed out on Alves and Neymar. We got Ivanovic and then Hazard. 

Modric looks like a rat, so I have always called him Modrat. Also, in England little CM's that get about in midfield are sometimes known as ratters. This to be fair is more Wise/Morris/Verratti type players, but I went with it anyway due to the looks. 

[Jase 43,479]

 

[BlueLyon 9,359]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

 

bvb is kinda stupid. It was positive for them to develop Hakimi, but what do they have now? They didnt get money, they didnt win any trophy. Its always better to develop your own player. It makes them small club developing for other clubs.

Real gets it so easy ffs. Same was with Carvajal a few years ago.

[King Kante 1,484]

9 hours ago, BlueLyon said:

bvb is kinda stupid. It was positive for them to develop Hakimi, but what do they have now? They didnt get money, they didnt win any trophy. Its always better to develop your own player. It makes them small club developing for other clubs.

Real gets it so easy ffs. Same was with Carvajal a few years ago.

Yeah, BVB are a bit of a funny one. They are the second biggest team in Germany who play regular CL but kind of act as if they are a big club playing in a small league. Really they should be able to keep most of the players they have. 

[Vesper 28,861]

Almost all of Barcelona’s squad are for sale. There’s just one problem…

https://theathletic.com/1997643/2020/08/19/messi-sale-busquets-pique-koeman-suarez/

“This is the first decision within a wider restructuring of the first team, which will be agreed between the current technical secretary and the new coach,” said the Barcelona club statement announcing coach Quique Setien’s sacking on Monday.

The message was clear. Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu and his board were reacting to the biggest humiliation in the club’s history with a firm hand. Even before the new coach had been appointed — still set to be Ronald Koeman but not yet confirmed — they had decided what needed to be done.

The club’s hierarchy were going to clear out those primarily responsible, including the coach they had appointed just seven months before but, most importantly, the group of ageing big names who were no longer capable of performing to the standards required.

Meanwhile, the technical secretary (or sporting director) Eric Abidal and his right-hand man Ramon Planes were to remain in place to conduct this extensive transfer business, overseen from the top by Bartomeu.

That all sounded nice and decisive on first reading. There is for sure a need for a deep restructuring in the Barca team — the annihilation by Bayern followed last year’s Champions League capitulation at Anfield, the previous season’s disaster at Roma, and on and on, back to the last time they won the trophy in 2015.

Those whose time is now up included Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique, Arturo Vidal, Jordi Alba and Ivan Rakitic. They are all past 30 now and have given great service to the club (well, except Vidal) but need to make way for a new team to emerge. Finding buyers for such high-profile players should also not be that difficult as there should always be a market for players with multiple World Cups, European Championships and Champions Leagues on their CVs, whatever the circumstances.

Or maybe not.

For example, Chelsea are known to be looking for a left-back this summer and have shown that, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have money to spend. Meanwhile, Alba, 31, is one of those who Barca are most keen to move on. But would Chelsea be up for spending a sizeable fee, or matching a current salary of around €10 million a year, for a player whose best career moment came in the Euro 2012 final when he raced clear to score for Spain? Or would they be better looking at Sergio Reguilon, 23, who just last Sunday, sliced through Manchester United’s defence to set up a goal for Sevilla in the Europa League semi-final and is available this summer for around €25 million, and with much lower wage demands?

Similarly, Sergio Busquets is another who Barca’s hierarchy would like to thank for his service and move on to make room for Frenkie de Jong to take over at the base of their midfield. Busquets still has a great personal relationship with his former Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola and they share the same agent. There were even talks about a move to Manchester City in 2016 before Busquets signed his most recent Barca contract worth around €14 million a year up to 2023. But then, should City stretch their wage structure to add another holding midfielder who is now 32 and even slower than those they currently have and thereby block the development of their big summer 2019 signing Rodri, who has been earmarked to take over from Busquets in the Spain national team? Probably not.

It is not as if Barca’s transfer decision-makers have not already been dealing with exactly these problems, without any clear success. They made a big effort last summer to move Rakitic on when De Jong was signed from Ajax for €75 million. The Croatian was among the players offered to Paris Saint-Germain in part-exchange for Neymar, while Manchester United, Everton, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and Juventus were also reportedly interested in taking him, according to leaks to friendly Catalan reporters. The player faced down the pressure to leave and stuck to his Barca contract, which pays him circa €7.5 million net per year. Even a free transfer to former club Sevilla was impossible as it would have required Barca to actually pay him to get him off their books.

Would the situation be any different now for Suarez, Vidal and Pique, who are all past their 33rd birthdays? Suarez is still one of the world’s best finishers on his day but also has a history of knee trouble and another 12 months left on a contract paying him €15 million a year. Vidal’s deal is worth around €8 million and also has another year to run.

Pique offered after Friday’s game to be “the first one to leave” if it were for the good of the club but where would the proud Catalan who remains Barca’s best defender realistically move to? Previously lucrative late-career destinations such as China, the USA and the Middle East were throwing much less money around than a few years back, even before the COVID-19 pandemic cut club budgets worldwide and made moving continents a lot more problematic for everyone.

The Barca transfer brains trust has been having plenty of trouble lately trying to sell younger players who are still at the peak of their market value. They signed Philippe Coutinho for €160 million from Liverpool in January 2018 before quickly realising there was no place for him in the team. All the Premier League’s biggest clubs have since been linked with the Brazilian but no potential buyer is willing to come even close to what Barca paid. So he was parked for a year on loan at Bayern, where he has not excelled either, but did come off the bench to score the German team’s seventh and eighth goals last weekend.

The huge salaries which Barca have continued to pay their senior players, even as the team’s collective standard dipped alarmingly through recent years, is a big contributing factor to the serious economic problems which emerged even before the pandemic blew a further hole in their finances.

The club would have needed to make significant cuts to the €500 million-plus annual wage bill even if this season had gone well on the pitch. Negotiations with the squad around temporary pay cuts during lockdown last March soured an already difficult relationship between the dressing room and the boardroom. Whatever Pique said about being willing to move on, senior players are very unlikely to want to do Bartomeu a favour by foregoing money they have been promised.

Then, less than 24 hours after the confirmation Setien’s departure came another serious change of plans. It turned out Abidal was not going to stay on to oversee the squad shake-up. Instead, he was being sacked as well. The Frenchman had been under serious pressure — both for being associated with Setien’s appointment last January and especially since Messi reprimanded him on Instagram for publicly holding the players responsible for the decision to fire predecessor Ernesto Valverde.

Abidal had kept a quiet public profile since then and there was some surprise that he appeared to have been entrusted with even greater responsibility in Monday’s official club statement. The confusion underlined just how difficult it will be to make the tough decisions required to rebuild the squad amid all the ongoing institutional instability at the club.

Bartomeu, though, maintained things are not really so bad when he spoke on Barca TV later on Tuesday evening. The Blaugrana club chief calmly explained that Abidal had himself asked to leave — albeit without being pressed on his own club’s internal channel for the exact motives or timeline. He then said Barcelona’s problems were “sporting, but not institutional” and confirmed that a big renewal of the playing squad was now going to take place. Planes was stepping up to take as sporting director, while Koeman would be involved in transfer decisions, with the board also having some input.

Even though Koeman had not yet been confirmed as coach, Bartomeu was happy to reply when asked which players he thought were “not for sale”. He started with Messi, then added Marc Andre ter Stegen, Clement Lenglet, Nelson Semedo, Ansu Fati, De Jong, Antoine Griezmann and Ousmane Dembele. Pointedly not mentioned were the veterans Pique, Busquets, Suarez, Alba, Rakitic and Vidal. Coutinho was a maybe.

“The renovation of the squad will be as deep as the new project requires,” Bartomeu said. “All options are on the table. Some players have already been spoken to, in order to explain the situation, and others will be, depending on what the technical secretary and the coach agree. There must be respect for the players. We are talking of some legendary figures who deserve an honourable goodbye.”

Again that all sounds very well in theory. But in the real world, it will not be so easy to choose exactly who stays and who leaves over the coming weeks, especially as Bartomeu confirmed that significant departures were necessary rather than just desirable. A drastic drop in revenues of €300 million owing to the COVID-19 crisis means the wage bill has to fall significantly to meet La Liga financial fair play rules.

Other squad members can be added to the list of those who might leave, namely Samuel Umtiti, Junior Firpo, Jean-Clair Todibo, Neto, Sergi Roberto, Moussa Wague, Carles Alena and Martin Braithwaite. None of these have been impressing potential purchasers with their recent performances.

A big challenge for those doing Barca’s negotiating is that they have just very publicly stated that the players they are putting on the market are no longer good enough for the top level. Given the size of the club’s financial problems, and how difficult it is going to be to find buyers for those they want to get rid of, it would be no surprise for some of the players on the “not for sale” list to suddenly be on the market were a big enough offer to arrive.

Then, there remains the enigma that is Messi. The Bayern defeat was followed by more claims that the Argentine had finally had enough and was going to leave. Such rumours have surfaced quite often through recent years, especially after the European exits which keep getting more painful every year.

What the 33-year-old really wants more than anything is to be part of a squad capable of winning big trophies again and The Athletic has been told recently by those close to him that leaving the Nou Camp would only ever be the very final resort. Some at Barca have privately considered the pros and cons of removing his €100 million-plus salary from the wage bill quite regularly in recent years. Yet, while nothing can be ruled out completely given the depth of the crisis at the club, his departure this summer still feels impossible.

Bartomeu said during his interview on Tuesday evening that Koeman wanted Messi to stay as the “keystone” of a new team. He admitted, however, he had not spoken to the club captain since the Bayern defeat; only to his father Jorge, who said his son was “disappointed and frustrated”.

A further complicating factor in the plan to completely rebuild the team is that the new La Liga season is set to start in mid-September. It is very, very unlikely for the “deep restructuring” to have been fully completed by then — especially as, presumably, the plan is to also sign a number of younger but still pretty established players beyond the already confirmed arrivals of midfielder Miralem Pjanic, and youngsters Trincao, Pedri and Matheus Fernandes.

New coach Koeman still has a huge status from scoring the goal which won the club their first European Cup in 1992 but is coming into a dressing room full of players who know they have been blamed for the disastrous 2019-20 and are up for sale. Across La Liga at Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane has successfully sidelined his unwanted galacticos Gareth Bale and James Rodriguez while keeping the team’s other big names and the club’s fans onside. Would Koeman be able to manage that with Busquets or Alba? How would Messi react if Suarez, his best mate outside his family, was furious after being made to train with the reserves?

So the drama at the Nou Camp is far from over. Bartomeu and his board are asking the club’s socio members and fans to trust that the people most responsible for building a completely unbalanced and uncompetitive squad can now fix its huge structural issues in double-quick time.

Monday also saw Barca set presidential elections at the club for next March. While Bartomeu cannot stand for re-election, the hope within the club hierarchy is that a new-look team having a better season on the pitch would allow for a “continuity candidate” to emerge and win that vote.

That will be a lot easier said than done.

[BlueLyon 9,359]

No one is going to pay such massive fees they demand for Alaba or Suarez. Also if they actualy told 3/4 of the squad they can feck off, why would they bother next year? Because sure they aint selling even half of them, nevermind getting all the replacements. 

Also they appointed new manager just few days later. Shouldnt they take some time to consider whole thing from long term perspective? 

Messi, if he wants to have a solid end of his career should leave. 

But what is the funniest thing is that they are now rebuilding for future or whatever yet not long ago they sold Arthur for Pjanic, another almost 30 y.o. with big wages 😂😂

[Tomo 21,733]

18 hours ago, King Kante said:

Yeah, our transfer business between 08-12 was pretty shocking. In that time, we could've had Alves, Modrat, Kun, Ribery (we picked Malouda instead) and Neymar if it wasn't for a mixture of not ponying up/taking the bad option or having certain Cnut's f*ck us over. 

Instead we ended up with players like Yossi, Bosingwa, Ramires, Torres and Malouda instead. Some of those of course weren't awful, but what could've been.....

Big problem was the team was so good we didn't feel an urgent need to get some serious top signings in. Liverpool appear to be making the exact same mistake today.

[Atomiswave 6,072]

4 minutes ago, Tomo said:

Liverpool appear to be making the exact same mistake today

And may it long continue

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Jase 43,479]