Barca Transfers and Rumors

Status
Not open for further replies.

Don Juan Laporta Estruch

Well-known member
Leao is one of those players other fans who only watch him in flashes rave about, but in truth he is a fucking nightmare when he is on your team and you watch him regularly.

Poor decision making, drifts out of games, not particularly clinical, no killer instinct what so ever, all finished off with a touch of apathy and lack of desire to be consistently elite.

He is like that super hot girl in the street that every single man wishes he could wife up, whereas her husband at home is absolutely sick to death of her due to her moaning all the time and how plain she looks without the make up.

Leah is a myth. An illusion. Some club will fall for it and pay 100m and regret it forever. Please let it not be us.
 

Tookien

Active member
All this talk about transfers at this most crucial point for Barcelona this season just cannot be good for the atmosphere of the club and players.
 

mc_lovin

Senior Member
Leao is one of those players other fans who only watch him in flashes rave about, but in truth he is a fucking nightmare when he is on your team and you watch him regularly.

Poor decision making, drifts out of games, not particularly clinical, no killer instinct what so ever, all finished off with a touch of apathy and lack of desire to be consistently elite.

He is like that super hot girl in the street that every single man wishes he could wife up, whereas her husband at home is absolutely sick to death of her due to her moaning all the time and how plain she looks without the make up.

Leah is a myth. An illusion. Some club will fall for it and pay 100m and regret it forever. Please let it not be us.
Agree, but there are just no real alternatives if you want to sign a LW with immediate impact. Kvara is a bum. Diaz is just good (noone should pay more than 50m for him and he will easily cost 100m+)... market sucks.

Ohhh I forgot Nico... hardly inspiring either and Ferran's better.
 

Andresito

Senior Member
Staff member
I think the expectations need to be lowered. At most we'll sign a DM and play one of the players we already have at LW, could be Ferran, could be Pedri or Gavi. It's not ideal but I don't we'll find an affordable LW this summer.

4-3-3 with Gundo as the advanced CM, Frenkie sitting behind with a defensive DM. Will be a setup with clear instructions, Frenkie in the buildup, DM to provide cover and Gundo to attack. Kind of how we would play with Christensen, Frenkie and Gundo.
 

Messi983

Senior Member

Forgot to answer this before.

One thing that's not mentioned in this article is that Oduro's current club (Accra Lions) is co-owned by a Bayern legend Lothar Matthaus so I think it's pretty likely he'll end up in Germany. Especially with Alphonso Davies probably leaving either this year or next when his contract expires Oduro would have a clear path to the first team minutes there if he's as talented as lot of people believe him to be.

Whether we'll get Oduro or not I do like club's efforts to sign African talents. Should also focus even more on South America too. Not so much on Brazil where youngsters are overpriced (and most also overrated) but countries like Uruguay (they were usually known more for their CBs and strikers but also had some pretty good midfielders over the last decade) and Ecuador. Maybe Colombia and Chile as well although both of those countries seem to struggle to produce quality youngsters lately. At least looking at their national teams they are full of older/oldish players. Doesn't mean we can't find a hidden gem somewhere though.

And in Europe I think there is a lot of talent that could be available for relatively cheap in Scandinavian countries. We missed out on Bergvall lately but surely other players with similar or maybe better potential will emerge somewhere in Sweden, Norway or Denmark. Just need to get them before they are snapped up by other bigger clubs or "development" clubs like Ajax, Dortmund and Brighton. Not easy but not impossible either. But something we should be doing in current situation when we can't just throw out 40 or 50 millions for the players like we used to in the past.
 

Messi983

Senior Member
I think the expectations need to be lowered. At most we'll sign a DM and play one of the players we already have at LW, could be Ferran, could be Pedri or Gavi. It's not ideal but I don't we'll find an affordable LW this summer.

4-3-3 with Gundo as the advanced CM, Frenkie sitting behind with a defensive DM. Will be a setup with clear instructions, Frenkie in the buildup, DM to provide cover and Gundo to attack. Kind of how we would play with Christensen, Frenkie and Gundo.

Agreed, DM should be an absolute priority.

Won't happen but I was thinking how our current team with the addition of a quality DM would look in Amorim's 3-4-3. And at least on paper I think we would be quite well suited for his system.


----------MATS------------

Kounde - Araujo - Cubarsi

Cancelo - FDJ - DM - Balde

----Yamal --- Gundo/Pedri

----- Roque------


We have solid depth at CB and also Faye and maybe Chadi Riad who could be brought back to replace Inigo longterm if we would like to have a left-footed CB (although AFAIK none of Sporting's current CBs is a leftie so not like Amorim's system needs one to work).

Would have to bring back Cancelo or find another offensive RB in this case obviously. Amorim is mostly using Geny Catamo who is a converted former winger as RB this season.

I think Frenkie is at his best playing in a double pivot system. Having a good "destroyer" alongside him would allow him more freedom to move around but at the same time he also has great work rate and is good enough defensively to not be a liability. And ofc would also have more cover behind him than he has now.

Amorim is using our old friend Trincao who I still like but ofc Yamal is a better player already and could play similar role as inside forward.

Then he has Pedro Goncalves who is really more a goal scoring midfielder similar to Bruno Fernandes (although he was sold a month before Amorim took over Sporting so never played in his system) than a winger. Could bring Rafa Silva who I've mentioned yesterday for that role as well but I think Gundo could also have lot of goal contributions playing in a more advanced role. Clearly not a long term answer for that position though. That said, I think Pedri has improved goal scoring aspect of his game under Xavi but sadly just can't stay fit for a whole season to keep improving. Should also had lot more assists but his teammates let him down (IIRC his xA last season was something like 6 or 7 but only had one assist in the league).

Depending on the opponents and/or game situation we could also play Pedri or Gundo deeper and bring on Ferran for example to add more pace/directness upfront if needed. The one who would miss out on his spot in the starting XI in this system would be Gavi but I would prefer to bring him back slowly next season and let him fully recover so we won't have another Fati case anyway. But longer term I'm sure Amorim would find a role for him as well.

And last but not least I think Roque could blossom in that pressing forward role Gyokeres is playing in. He doesn't have same size or speed (fully disagree with people who think Roque is "slow" though) but it's not like Amorim is using Gyokeres as a physical presence target forward anyway. He's better technically too but Roque can still improve in that aspect of his game.

I'm starting to get tired of watching this whole Barca DNA over and over again and would like to see us try something new. Would it work? I don't know but at least we would think outside of the box for once (bringing a German coach whether that's Flick, Nagelsmann or Tuchel would mean the same but won't go into that here). But as said above this is more of a fun mental experiment than any real chances to see how this would work.

I like Amorim as a coach and will be interesting to see how he'll do in his next club if he decides to leave Sporting in summer. If reports about Xabi prefering Bayern over Liverpool are true then I think he would be a great replacement for Klopp in a well organized club. If he's as smart as I think he is he'll go there if offered the job.

But more selfish side of me would prefer him going to Chelsea, inevitably flop like probably any coach would under that stupid Yankee owner so we would get another more realistic chance to get him in 2-3 years. Unless we will find a good longterm coach before that which would be preferable but it's far from guaranteed to happen.
 

Porque

Senior Member
Also, looking at the list of upcoming free agents I would consider Rafa Silva. Not exactly a LW but think he could play any position upfront depending on the system new coach will use. If we'll sign a Portuguese would def prefer him over Felix.


Looked at him before, but Benfica have an option to extend contract.
 

vuji_31

Senior Member
We all agree we need destroyer in the midfied.

We are not linked with much players.
Some stupid reports write about Kimmich, but i would not like him here at all. We need different profile.

I think with 2-3 world class players we can compete against anyone.

Question is, how much money we can spend, but at least we have some players to sell or offload this year.

Kounde 50mil-60mil, Rapinha 50-60mil, Dest 10mil, Lenglet 5-10mil, Christensen 30-40mil., Ansu Fati 10-20mil, E.Garcia 5mil, Chadi Riad 10mil, Robereto free, Alonso free...

I think we are in much better situation then last year, when we needed to offload just dead weight players with 0 value, like Busqets, Alba, Umtiti,
Lenglet, Fati, Dest...

Now Lenglet is playing every game at Aston Villa, Dest impressed in PSV, De zerbi wants to keep Fati another year...

Hope so we make good sales, keep Cancelo and get great destroyer in midfield, and get pace merchant at LW, so we can be more dangerous in transition.
 

Porque

Senior Member
Forgot to answer this before.

One thing that's not mentioned in this article is that Oduro's current club (Accra Lions) is co-owned by a Bayern legend Lothar Matthaus so I think it's pretty likely he'll end up in Germany. Especially with Alphonso Davies probably leaving either this year or next when his contract expires Oduro would have a clear path to the first team minutes there if he's as talented as lot of people believe him to be.

Whether we'll get Oduro or not I do like club's efforts to sign African talents. Should also focus even more on South America too. Not so much on Brazil where youngsters are overpriced (and most also overrated) but countries like Uruguay (they were usually known more for their CBs and strikers but also had some pretty good midfielders over the last decade) and Ecuador. Maybe Colombia and Chile as well although both of those countries seem to struggle to produce quality youngsters lately. At least looking at their national teams they are full of older/oldish players. Doesn't mean we can't find a hidden gem somewhere though.

And in Europe I think there is a lot of talent that could be available for relatively cheap in Scandinavian countries. We missed out on Bergvall lately but surely other players with similar or maybe better potential will emerge somewhere in Sweden, Norway or Denmark. Just need to get them before they are snapped up by other bigger clubs or "development" clubs like Ajax, Dortmund and Brighton. Not easy but not impossible either. But something we should be doing in current situation when we can't just throw out 40 or 50 millions for the players like we used to in the past.

I don't think he would be trialling at Chelsea and ourselves if Bayern had any preferential option though.

Back to the bold, right now we are even priced out of the European 2nd tier market. And when I say right now, it is basically until the stadium is rebuilt and income levels can increase.

Take third top scorer in the Belgian League Igor Thiago for example. Fee already agreed to join Bournemouth for 35m in the Summer. Ok, we did sign Roque, but that is alot of money for a guy who just moved to Europe for 10m this past Summer.

We have been extremely shrewd to get both Faye and Diarra who look to have a very high ceiling. But it doesn't seem like a long term strategy that will work.
 

Messi983

Senior Member
Didn't mean Bayern had preferential option just that Matthaus could convince him to join them rather than us or Chelsea.

I agree with you but still think it's possible to find gems like Faye and Diarra for cheap and hopefully turn some of them into the next Pedri or Araujo who were both also good strategic long term signings in times we still had money to spend.

Looked at him before, but Benfica have an option to extend contract.

Where did you see that? It's not mentioned on TM and they usually have these clauses for most players. Would make some sense why I've not seen him linked to any club though. I think he's a good player who should generate some interest as a free agent.
 

Porque

Senior Member
Where did you see that? It's not mentioned on TM and they usually have these clauses for most players. Would make some sense why I've not seen him linked to any club though. I think he's a good player who should generate some interest as a free agent.

Actually, I thought I saw it on TM but it doesn't seem to be there. So I must have imagined it.

I reckon he would be one of those Saudi bound, but in terms of ourselves, has to be a name of interest.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Home of Barca Fans

Top