Barca Transfers and Rumors

[DonAK]

If it was up to me, I'd happily pay 160m for a CM and an AM. Sell Denis to Napoli, Rafinha who might want to leave anyway and Gomes. These two midfielders + Rakitic and Iniesta for rotation. Could rotate a lot. When The Don retires, Alena in theory takes his place if he makes it big time. There's Roberto too. Our depth would be amazing and the possibility to actually rotate a lot without a significant drop in quality or dynamics.

We've paid the price for our bad business by letting players like Isco slip away, and not just to anyone, but to our eternal rivals.

It does seem like we'll only get one midfielder though.

Before anyone swoops in and say that this is not FM, then I know, but had we made smart decisions the last 2-3 years we would have already had a midfielder, a winger, a right-back and not needed to invest big in an ageing squad, ageing core.

Unfortunately poor decision making and a lack of vision has put us here.

We have Messi, Suarez, Iniesta and Busquets, but they will not be here forever and they cannot keep playing every single game for the next few seasons either.

 

[JamDav1982]

Do you think Liverpool would accept a 80-90 bid though? Don't you think they are in the position to push that fee up to the magic 100 number even if Coutinho skips training, pre-season etc.

No idea what the fee would be to get them to sell.

Think they would stand firm though as the fans would go nuts if they sell him after losing some of their best attacking players in recent years.

I dont think it will happen or Coutinho will behave in a way to force them to sell.

 

[serghei]

If it was up to me, I'd happily pay 160m for a CM and an AM. Sell Denis to Napoli, Rafinha who might want to leave anyway and Gomes. These two midfielders + Rakitic and Iniesta for rotation. Could rotate a lot. When The Don retires, Alena in theory takes his place if he makes it big time. There's Roberto too. Our depth would be amazing and the possibility to actually rotate a lot without a significant drop in quality or dynamics.

We've paid the price for our bad business by letting players like Isco slip away, and not just to anyone, but to our eternal rivals.

It does seem like we'll only get one midfielder though.

Before anyone swoops in and say that this is not FM, then I know, but had we made smart decisions the last 2-3 years we would have already had a midfielder, a winger, a right-back and not needed to invest big in an ageing squad, ageing core.

Unfortunately poor decision making and a lack of vision has put us here.

We have Messi, Suarez, Iniesta and Busquets, but they will not be here forever and they cannot keep playing every single game for the next few seasons either.

Agree, except I'd give Gomes another season. Call me crazy, but it's not wise to sell at a major loss now. Let's see him under a different manager and then we can offload him in 2018 if he doesn't perform a lot better. I would sell Denis and Rafinha though.

I don't think we can get 30+ millions on Gomes right now, so I'd rather wait one more season. We would do fine with Iniesta, Coutinho, Roberto, Gomes, Rakitic and Alena.

 

[DonAK]

Agree, except I'd give Gomes another season. Call me crazy, but it's not wise to sell at a major loss now. Let's see him under a different manager and then we can offload him in 2018 if he doesn't perform a lot better. I would sell Denis and Rafinha though.

I don't think we can get 30+ millions on Gomes right now, so I'd rather wait one more season. We would do fine with Iniesta, Coutinho, Roberto, Gomes, Rakitic and Alena.

That's assuming we get 28m+ for Gomes.

If there are teams interested in him and willing to pay 30m. I'd sell. I like Gomes and thought he was a decent signing, partly because I had the idea that Lucho was making a radical tactical change which he might have considered but dropped.

But he just doesn't fit in. Even if he improves next season, I'm not sure he'll improve in a way that it'd be worth not signing two midfielders and/or blocking someone like Alena's way or eating up Roberto's minutes.

And if he doesn't improve at all next season, then we'll struggle to get a good fee for him as everyone will lowball us. I don't like to sell a player after a single season, but sometimes you have to make brutal decisions like these, and unfortunately we don't seem to be able to do so. We act like a charity signing injured or mediocre players like Douglas.

Whenever someone advocates for that, he or she is told that it's a Madridista way of thinking, or reminded about Més que un club.

Més que un club got nothing to do with that. It has a historical and political significance for Barca and Catalunya, not what every twitterista think these days.

 

[serghei]

And if he doesn't improve at all next season, then we'll struggle to get a good fee for him as everyone will lowball us. I don't like to sell a player after a single season, but sometimes you have to make brutal decisions like these, and unfortunately we don't seem to be able to do so. We act like a charity signing injured or mediocre players like Douglas.

Whenever someone advocates for that, he or she is told that it's a Madridista way of thinking, or reminded about Més que un club.

True. But I'm not yet at the point, personally, to think any hope of him being a top player for us is lost. Similar to the Sanchez 2nd season. Sometimes you have players going through really bad bad periods, in which they seem like they are shit, but really aren't. Many would have sold Sanchez at the end of the 2nd season for as little as 20m., saying Tello was a better player. 1 seasons is never good enough to judge a player, let alone a chaotic one like this.

And we don't know what style the new manager will play, or whether he has a plan for Gomes or not.

 

[DonAK]

True. But I'm not yet at the point, personally, to think any hope of him being a top player for us is lost. Similar to the Sanchez 2nd season. Sometimes you have players going through really bad bad periods, in which they seem like they are shit, but really aren't. Many would have sold Sanchez at the end of the 2nd season for as little as 20m., saying Tello was a better player. 1 seasons is never good enough to judge a player, let alone a chaotic one like this.

And we don't know what style the new manager will play, or whether he has a plan for Gomes or not.

I'm not sure that's comparable though. Alexis had some great moments in his first season along with some bad ones and injuries. Shit second season though, true. Gomes has showed very, very little, and it's a position we absolutely need to reinforce.

Yeah, next coach will be important, but I'm not sure someone like Valverde will be like that he absolutely must stay. Lucho would have for sure as Gomes was his and Robert, both's project.

 

[KingMessi]

Unless we can get 30M+ for Gomes, he should stay.

 

[xXKonan]

MD says since we didn't get Theo, Mendy and Rodriguez, are our next LB targets.

 

[Sultan]

As [MENTION=2]Bojan[/MENTION] mentioned earlier. How will Coutinho fit into Valverde's 4-2-3-1?

He is a quality player and i would love to have him join us, but there are a lot of unknowns at the moment.

What formation are we going to play?
What position will Messi play primarily?
How are we going to re-build the right flank?

Getting Coutinho should be way down on our priority list.

 

[xXKonan]

As [MENTION=2]Bojan[/MENTION] mentioned earlier. How will Coutinho fit into Valverde's 4-2-3-1?

He is a quality player and i would love to have him join us, but there are a lot of unknowns at the moment.

What formation are we going to play?
What position will Messi play primarily?
How are we going to re-build the right flank?

Getting Coutinho should be way down on our priority list.

It all depends how well he could play on the RW. or he lines up as a #10 while Messi is on the RW, and both of them interchange positions when needed.

as for the LB links, from MD. I don't get why are we looking for a LB? something must be going on behind the scenes we don't know about in regards to Alba.

 

[Sultan]

It all depends how well he could play on the RW. or he lines up as a #10 while Messi is on the RW, and both of them interchange positions when needed.

as for the LB links, from MD. I don't get why are we looking for a LB? something must be going on behind the scenes we don't know about in regards to Alba.

If we switch to 4-2-3-1, Messi would have to play in the middle and playing Coutinho on the right would really be a waste. Wouldn't it make more sense for us to get B.Silva or even Dembele/Deulofeu?

In a 433 set up, he could play in Iniesta's position but then we are back to square one.

 

[xXKonan]

According to Francesc Aguilar, Robert had a meeting with Benfica's president Luís Filipe Ferreira Vieira in Barcelona to talk about transfers last Monday. Paco Mentions, while they didn't revel the names, that were discuss he did say we are following both Semedo and Lindelöf.

 

[Sepuldinho]

We have been to slow on the only "decent" options.
But its how it is. Getting Coutinho or Silva will solve our aging Iniesta AM problem, but it wont solve the deep playing playmaker CM problem.

which should be our #1 priority IMO

 

[MIXA]

I don't think Robert has any intention of signing any deep lying CM.

Rakitic has been given a long term contract and it seems like Gomes will stay for one more season at least. One of those 2 players will most likely be the other midfielder in our regular 11.

It appears that the priority is to only sign one midfielder and not 2. That in itself is going to be another transfer window failure from us.

 

[DonAK]

According to Francesc Aguilar, Robert had a meeting with Benfica's president Luís Filipe Ferreira Vieira in Barcelona to talk about transfers last Monday. Paco Mentions, while they didn't revel the names, that were discuss he did say we are following both Semedo and Lindelöf.

I really hope it's not Lindelöf we're planning to sign...