Jägermeister
New member
Alves a "junk-player"? Wtf
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Too much pathetic crying going on in this thread. Yeah, yeah, we get it, we'll be worse off than Milan in the span of a few seasons... Ridiculous
Milan were complacent as well and thought they'd be fine with Maldini, Nesta, Cafu, Seedorf, Inzaghi and co going on forever without preparing for the succession.
Barca have played for years on having the money to buy ready made stars to complement a La Masia golden genertion (as Milan did when bankrolled by Berlusconi) but new money is emerging all the time and the market is starting to inflate beyond an affordable level for the club. The way the Premier League is going several clubs in England will become richer than Barcelona, Real Madrid already are the richest club in revenue and Bayern are up there. Chinese clubs will be richer than Barca.
With La Masia now running on empty this means Barca need sort out their scouting and transfer strategy or will be left behind by the time the new stadium is ready and the current XI need replacing properly. We need to act now, not exacerbate the problem by signing more ageing squad fillers.
Trickykid
Active member
I'm not sure if you've been following the rumors the last 6 months (or whatever), but easily the most persistent rumors have been about us wanting to rejuvenate our defense first and foremost.
But again, a rumor about us wanting a backup attacker (who's not young, WTF Lucho?!?! Gasp!) turns us into Milan a month before the damn transfer market even opens.
If we end up without any transfers that'll help rejuvenating our squad (hello Denis), you can all lose your shit like you're hoping for, but right now it just seems to premature and childish.
Oh, and La Masia running empty? Qué?
Which we've heard for the last 5 years and either gone out and signed Song after spending the summer chasing Thiago Silva, or gone out and signed Mathieu and Vermalen after chasing Marquinhos. 3 players who already are worth nothing to us in terms of sell on value and are out the team.
It's years of bad strategy and mistakes that need to be learned from, not continued.
The state of the bench and the B team shows the lack of quality coming through at the moment, particularly at 18-22 Hopefully it's a blip but it's bad at the moment.
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Jamie Cal
Guest
We have cover for Ini and Dani, though. 2 players to backup either that we can depend, even if you or I aren't convinced with those backups. CB this year, midfielder and a possible RB next year, all as starters.
Look, I see there's plenty of negatives about Gameiro, but we need someone for 2 or 3 years who is gonna understand their role at the club. Vidal played 47 games for them last year, so it' not as if he was a scrub there. Plus, Sevilla have so many players for every position it's hard to say who is a key player! They're trying to twist our arm with 40 million, but he'll never go for that much, even we're not stupid enough to pay it.
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Jamie Cal
Guest
Agree with all this, man, we're on the same page. I always thought sending Sandro to Spurs wouldn't make a lot of sense if (big IF) we see a future for him here. Eredivisie would be a good level for him. Still think with the right backing he can be good player, though maybe not for us. Doubt we'd have near the money for Bazoer, but he's definitely a good shot in the dark at a guy who could become a star. There doesn't seem to be a lot of midfielders of his energetic style around atm.
I'd be happy enough with Bailly or maybe even Jon Tah and letting them rotate regularly with Masch for a year. Bailly's a bit raw for us yet but he'll definitely make the step up to someone big sooner or later. I'm not wild (like you) on relying on guys like that at fullback, but when Mathieu was playing his best stuff in the run up to Arsenal game, he played like 4/5 games in a row iirc, even at left back. Keeping a guy in the loop and giving him minutes where possible is a great way to build confidence.
Trickykid
Active member
It's been a while since we really needed to rejuvenate the defense. We do soon, thus making the proper arrangements now.
I wonder if our oh so terrible transfer strategy helped us get a few titles in these dire years, perhaps? Had we won the same titles without the likes of Suarez if we had instead signed promising youngsters to bolster us for the future?
La Masia is still loaded with talent. Perhaps not first team material as we speak, but plenty potential for the next decade. Saying it's running empty is just another piece of hyperbole.
Again, for the drama queens; yes, we need to rejuvenate the squad, but no, we're not turning into Milan. Sorry to disappoint.
Having Messi, Iniesta, Busquets, Puyol, Pedro, Xavi and Valdes come through the youth helped transform the club. Some star purchases have helped transform the team as well, like Ronaldino and Suarez. The point is, Barca may not be able to afford these star purchases in the future and won't have the same level of La Masia progression as that generation. This means Barca need to be far smarter in using the wider market.
It's running on empty while the B team is crap and the first team bench is mostly full of crap who aren't trusted. Lower down the ages it might be different, but the path to the first team needs to work and Barca need to keep hold of those talents rather than end up paying Arsenal a shit load again for Bellerin.
And you only need to look at the major amounts of money spent by the likes of Chelsea and Man City on youth development in recent years. They may not have the best of paths to the first team but Chelsea are completely dominating youth football now, domestically and in Europe. Golden generations of youth players come and go.
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I really hope this means we spend the 60-70m we can spend this summer on proper players then. Perhaps we count Ben Arfa as a 10m signing because of signing on fee and his wages, but we should have 60m to spend on 2 defensive purchases who are some of the best in their leagues but still young. Players like Fabinho from Monaco, Umtiti from Lyon and Mustafi from Valencia should be high up the list, although Mustafi might actually be too expensive for us if Man U is pushing hard for him!
Reading the comments from the Nice MD / owner ..... It looks as though all parties have agreed financially and it's simply up to Ben Arfa to decide if he wants to join us .
yeah, he's out of contract so he can decide.
Messi983
Senior Member
I agree those players are flops, but you mentioned Afellay as one of them. I don't agree with that. We bought him in January transfer window when he was 25 so it was a smart transfer at that time. I think he could offer us more if he wasn't injury prone but he did have that assist that help us to qualify for CL final. Winning trophies is important, so that's enough for me to not consider him a flop in the same way that other players you mentioned. I won't say Vermaelen is not a failure because he played two league games when the league was already won in our treble season. He did nothing to help us win the trophy, Afellay did his part. Yes, not as big as some other players, but still important. That's a difference in my opinion.
And I totally know how much €3M is. It's a money I probably won't see in my lifetime if I won't be lucky enough to win a lottery but at the same time it's not much for a club like Barça. I'm also aware we had to pay his salary, I'm not that stupid to think he played for free. But we have to pay salary for every player that we buy and if transfer fee is 3M instead of 10M that means we saved some money.
I've never said we didn't had bad transfers (every club has them), I've just said we are not as shitty with transfers as some people believe. I think over the last few years we had more good (and some great) transfers than bad ones but that's just me. Feel free to disagree.
Don't waste your time with that, you won't convince people that think we only buy shitty and/or old players and are going down the Milan road in a couple of years.
khaled_a_d
Senior Member
We have a new sporting director who was working for the best club in Spain in getting gr8 young talents(Atletico Madrid) ,so past years really doesn't mean a lot
Coach and sporting directors are the 2 important guys in signing ,one will have his 3rd summer and the other his 1st .and the later is more important in getting young players
The B team has undergone a total rebuilt after the ban and it has been improving and back to what it is supposed to be when we were producing young talents
A team in Segunda B that have many veterans that help young players to develop
Also the b team always had many players with hope of 1st team ,usually every couple or more years one of them emerges into Barca material .so its state changes very quickly anyway .on almost a yearly basis
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