Letting go a young motivated leader for a mercenary who is about to come here to retire on sun and sea.
Nothing I've seen from Tah gives me that impression. Lad has not won anything in his career until last season so I'm sure he would come in very motivated.
Also, 18 months ago people were saying the same about Inigo and he has more than proven his worth this season when he has finally stayed fit.
One thing Tah has over Araujo is availability. He has not had a serious injury in last 7-8 years. I think he's also better on the ball than Ronald while having a similar physical profile.
I'm not saying we should sell Araujo, far from that. Would rather offload Christensen (though won't get much for him) who will probably never fully recover from his nagging Achilles problems. But if Ronald doesn't want to renew then we have no other option but get whatever we can for him. Just can't afford to risk letting him go on free in current situation. And I don't buy rumours about selling (and even less loaning) him in January. Inigo and Cubarsi are already overplayed and if one of them gets injured we are down to Big Dom (Flick clearly sees Eric more as a midfielder than CB).
Ideally Araujo will accept club's offer in coming weeks/months and we'll go into next season with Pau, Araujo, Tah and Inigo as CBs (I'm counting on Kounde as a full time RB now but could also cover at CB if needed ofc). Would be the best CB depth we've had in a very long time. And then in 2026 we can re-evaluate situation and bring a younger CB (maybe left-footed though don't know if footedness is that important to Flick) to replace Inigo.
Also age wise would be the best structure we could/should have imo. Two players (Araujo and Tah) in their prime years, a very serviceable veteran backup who can always step in as a starter (as proven this year) in Inigo and a youngster Pau who is already amongst best CBs in the world imo but we should still manage his minutes. Something we don't have a luxury this season but we shouldn't really ran him to the ground before he even turns 20.
One worry I do have is Flick's inability (at least shown so far) to rotate and use a whole squad at his disposal. But I think with those four CBs you can't really go wrong using any of them. Would still need to find right chemistry and understanding amongst them though. We'll see now how Araujo (and Christensen if/when he returns) will be integrated in Flick's defense.
