[MENTION=11668]khaled_a_d[/MENTION] : I respect your opinion and often agree with you but I think you totally missed a lot of points I was trying to make.
You did a BBZ here, I'm impressed
BBZ goes into extremes too much but I think he is right that not every young talent people expect to become great will actually become great or at least good enough to be a squad player. Success rate is usually pretty low when signing unproven players and that's why I think spraying the risk is better than putting all eggs in one basket.
If we believe Oriol is great, why we should pay 8m for Rivera?
Because even if we believe Oriol is a great talent (which I think he is), there is no guarantee that he will actually develop into a great player and become first team member, let alone a starter one day. So having more options/players improves our chances that one of them will actually make it in our first team.
8m is not much today and it's possible we could get Rivera for even less. If he'll convince during his loan then I wouldn't mind using our buy option. Also, keep in mind that 8m clause is just a speculation from my side and it's not 100% his clause is really 8m. It could also be lower or even higher. What is officialy confirmed is that we have a buy option for Rivera but I haven't seen reported anywhere how much that option is. It could be equal to his release clause or maybe lower if Eibar doesn't count on Rivera longterm and want to just cash on him.
This is what I hate about Barca B philosophy, every talent has to pass on Barca B when we could spread it on many clubs. The whole "let all the talent compete against each other" has been proven wrong for few seasons now, since its start La Masia has declined (even if it is one of many factors"
Well, I've mentioned that. I've said we should use buy and loan option more instead of always bringing players to Barça B. I also didn't said we should keep Rivera and Oriol B. both in B team for a long time to compete against each other. My point was just that it's nothing wrong if we bring competition for Oriol this season and if Rivera will prove to be a better player and help out the team more then he'll probably play more in next 5 months.
I expect him and Oriol will share playing time but IF Rivera will show enough to convince the club he could have a first team future (not now but maybe in 2-3 years) then buying him for cheap and loaning him out would make sense. Or in case Oriol would be promoted to the first team in summer (which seems unlikely right now but stranger things have happened) we could also buy and actually keep Rivera for one season as a starter in Barça B.
As for the senior Busquets, I think you are underestimating him, I would say he has at least 4 seasons as a starter here. His style of pay will allow him to last much longer than rest of our midfielders. You don't start looking for a replacement that early, because if you found one you will fail to develop or retain him.
Maybe I am and Busi will play on a high level for 4 or 5 more seasons but I don't believe it's too early to start looking for his replacement. We have to be prepared when his decline will start or we'll again have to pay big money to get his replacement like we had to do with Coutinho to replace Iniesta because we didn't address that need earlier. Maybe we'll eventually have to pay big money for Busi replacement anyway but if we start to look now and try out different players there are more chances one of them could actually be good enough to potentially replace Busi one day.
Also, we currently don't have a clear substitute for him in first team. Surely there are players like Rakitic and Roberto who could fill in and do a good job when needed but they are currently starters at other positions. We also have Samper on loan but his future at the club is in the air after recent injury (and was even before that tbf). Even if Busquets will stay a starter for 4 more years I think he'll need to get more rest every season so there could be enough opportunities for other players to show if we can count on them longterm.
Surely if you find a superb talent you would take him anyway, question is Rivera that type of talent? He just look like a typical signing to strengthen Barca B for fight against relegation, nothing wrong in that as long as we don't pay 8M for it
Again, I'm not saying we should absolutely buy him for 8m. I don't know how good Rivera really is but he'll have next 5 months to prove himself. IF he'll show enough to convince the club to use his buy option then I'm ok with that. If not then we'll continue to look.
B teams for almost all Liga clubs has developed talents better in Segunda B than Segunda A, I still see a valid argument against it, Segunda A is good when you loan a player their to play with seniors and not for a team full of young players
While I agree with your overall point I still think players learn more playing against better opponents constantly so it's better for Barça B to stay in Segunda.
I mean sure I would love we always look for young talents, we are already doing that with Arnaiz, RDG & Cuenca, but it should always calculated risk, under 15M shouldn't be the signings of B team players. we can't have a budgut of 40M signings for that team.
Again you've missed my point.
I didn't say we should spend 40m at once for Barça B signings. I was just saying that when talking about Busquets's possible longterm replacement I would prefer to spend 30-40m on 3, 4 or 5 players over the next few years and try them out to see if one of them will turn out to be good enough. Not all of them would be bought with intention to play at Barça B.
My plan would be to bring one or two players to Barça B, possibly on loan with buy option so they would first have to prove themselves before we invest more money in them (we did that with Rivera). Let's say total costs for those players would be around 8-10m.
Then buy one for the first team for around 15-20m but it would be good if that player would be versatile enough to also play as CM/CB or another position so he'd have more chances to get regular playing time. I've mentioned Fabian Ruiz who I think could play both DM and CM here but of course there are other options as well.
And at last, bring another player or two and send them on loan, possibly even to their current clubs if they are already established players there. Again total cost here would be around 10m.
That way we would spend around 40m in 2-3 years looking for Busquets replacement. You think that's too much? With Busi still in his top form for now we still have a luxury to make these kind of "experiments" and I think it's better than buy just one player for 40m and then he'll turn out to be the next Gomes (you probably know that I actually like him but it's clear he'll never be our starter and most likely don't even have a future at Barça beyond this summer).
If at least one of those players will turn out to be good enough to be a squad player here (for which we'd have to pay 40m) then we could say experiment was successful. If we are lucky and get a future starter/Busi replacement out of those 4-5 players then we'd save 30-40m as we would have to pay 70-80m (and possibly even more with the market probably going crazier every year) to buy a proven starter after Busi (but again, even paying 70-80m doesn't guarantee that player would really be good enough for us). And if we are extremely lucky and two of those players will have a future in Barça (one as as starter and other as his backup) then we'd probably save more than 100m.
Although after buying Semedo, Dembele and Coutinho our future looks brighter than it did 6 months ago there are still positions (mainly CM and versatile forward - LW/ST) where we'll need player(s) able to make more instant impact so we'll probably invest bigger money into those positions this and next summer. Probably Griezmann and whoever we'll buy for a CM position after we'll sell most of current midfielders.
But I think for now DM is a position where we can afford to gamble with those low risk/possible high reward type of signings for the next 2 years just like we could take a risk with Mina because Pique still has a few good years in him and we have a starter at other CB position set longterm in Umtiti.
ok, it's time to stop or I'll really turn into BBZ.
