I'm not sure I buy the notion that RM and Flo will just forfeit an entire season like that. Besides, seeing the chinks in our own armor last season, it would make perfect sense for you guys to go all in for a serious title challenge this season. I guess Mbappé and to a degree, Hazard foiled that, though.
It depends what we mean by forfeit. Like I said, Flo still doesn't like us being low down and he openly stated on the Amazon Prime documentary that he 'hated the way we played' last season under Zidane and how horrible we were, which led to people speculating Zizou would be getting sacked regardless if he didn't leave ahead of time. That said, I think they were at peace with the assumed direction because 1) we're getting a manager seemingly acquainted with the Spaniards in the team, 2) we haven't given completely free reign to any forwards under Cristiano so we didn't know what they were really capable of and assumed it would be beneficial to try it, 3) we came off a back-to-back-to-back which probably wont be repeated any time soon in history. So no need to pursue "more" and obsess about getting a result this year. It was more about seeing how it goes without our best scorer ever and most predicted it wouldn't go so smooth if you're not getting a replacement, but there has to be a reason for our inactivity.
It basically seems to be one of the three things:
a) We're pumping all we have into the stadium and don't have THAT much flexibility short term so we choose to invest more in a lot of young talent that we already know has some quality.
b) We're saving up a big pot of money for a big name to further Flo's marketing agenda i.e. Neymar, whether it's Flo's personal favourite or not.
c) We're sitting on a pot of gold and genuinely fucked up, and overestimated the talent we have at hand and how they would handle themselves in front of goal, and only went with mediocre Mariano option.
Now it's easy to get cynical about it and say (c) is obvious, but I'd like to think Florentino isn't this much of a mug to be actually sitting on money and not spending it on a guy who obviously wants to come and join us i.e. Hazard. Thus I'm so far leaning towards option A, but there was loads of circumstantial evidence of nepotism/megalomania towards Bale and Benzema over the years (such as consistent getting rid of quality #2 strikers contending against Benzema and squashing Bale transfer rumors despite relatively mediocre up-and-down output) so that cannot be ruled out.
Basically - this season is fucked, which is fine, as long as we ARE planning something in winter + summer and good changes take place. Most players like Marcelo, Modrić won't be happy about finishing with nothing and would rather go get a good paycheck elsewhere.
Flo knows it too so I'm sure he'll be working the phones.
Gotcha.
What's your take on the winter market then? If we go by the freshest of reports Conte will be your new coach sooner rather than later. Are you going to splurge come January or stick with plan Nerman/Mbappé for the summer?
Conte will be a fucking disaster here. Not in the least because he's a defensive coach, but for one we have to commit to 2-3 year deal with him and players we have will be sick of him after a season.
Remember the stories Chiellini told? Something about how Conte basically chooses to intentionally fight the guys with the highest stature in the locker room, usually for petty reasons, to let the team know nobody is free of scrutiny on any level.
One time he arranged with Buffon, then-captain, to 'pretend to make a scene' before a game against Cagliari, last game of the season which would get them past the 100-point barrier. Buffon was late to a video tactical preview session saying "Sorry boss, I was arranging things to do with team bonuses for us with the team director". To which Conte basically responded by yelling "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE"... "what?! what are you staring at? OUT! You're a captain and you're being totally unprofessional before a very important game!! FUCK OUT OF HERE ALL OF YOU". So they all left and thought between themselves "Damn if he's slating Gigi so much this game is actually important". And this was staged because Conte thought emotions and complacency is a tad too high.
They won 3-0. But can you imagine this working with Ramos doing make-believe shit?
There was also allegedly a game against Verona, where it was 2-0, Verona pulled back to draw 2-2 and he goes and says in the team talk - "tomorrow we have an extra training session at 6am, because you fucked around".
According to Pirlo dude throws pens, boots, mugs around the locker room.
That shit won't work here. It might work for 1 year, sure, but then it means we need to sack him when it stops working and pay him the release bonus of 15-20 million to get a replacement manager. And he would never agree to work as a caretaker or anything of the sort.
Also potentially makes Hazard move.. more complicated than it already is.
PS
As for actual transfer moves, I don't see why we would splurge out anything on Hazard in winter UNLESS we literally do not climb out of mid-table by end of December and the prospect of us finishing outside of CL spots becomes a real fear. Only then it could push Floro to do emergency transfers and actually spend that money.
