Pogba s price would be waaay over 100 mil. His physical advantage is not worth the difference in money.
Right now i m not sure what system we will play next year, because the team is not yet set. With Suarez in the first 11 i don t think 4-3-3 is an option, at least not a good one.
I do think Valverde will have to make some tough choices. If we do get 2-3 midfield players, 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1 also doesn t make much sence, so if we end up with Thiago and Arthur this summer, 3 man MF is a must, but this also
means, that Suarez shouldn t be in the starting 11. Hard choices for Valverde.
Busi-Thiago(creative)-Rakitic/Arthur and i would play Coutinho with Messi and Dembele up front. There is plenty of creativity within this 6 players.
My personal choice would be much more drastic. I would sell Suarez and Rakitic, play Messi upfront in the center and bring Kante/Milinkovic type of runner to team up with Busi-Thiago.
Everyone has their own opinion.
I don't think that Thiago is a leader/creator for Barca.
In your setup, he would be a creative leader of our midfield. That's not a positive thing in my eyes.
About other things, you would sell a CF, which I wouldn't.
Imo, Messi would drop deep.
Cou is not a true attacker, and Dembele is a winger far from goal.
In reality, we would often have zero players in the box and around the box.
You're very wrong about Milinkovic-Savic.
Pogba is a better creator than him, but an inferior goalscorer and Sergej has hardly proven himself to be a leader, and is only 22/23 years old and inexperienced with just one season at this level.
It's the exact type of player you love to hate. Would be hypocritical of you to suggest Milinkovic-Savic as a solution BBZ. Very disappointed with you.
They might be similar players, Pogba is just a clown as a personality, with tons of unneeded tricks, closer to Neymar.
I haven't watched that much of Savic, btw.
I may be wrong.
I just think that he has a lot of nice ALLROUND skills.
He could be decent in EV's 442 with 3-4 workhorses from the beginning of a season.
For 433 probably not that good.
Ok BBZ I respect your opinion but if Thiago is not the answer who is? Savic?!?! Come on! No freakin way! For this amount of money he would be a ludicrous gamble!!! Name one player who is available and would be a huge improvement over our current midfield! Thiago may have his flaws and of course he is not Xavi and will never be, nobody is saying that he is Xavi 2.0. He is also injury prone but in today's market he is the best possible short term solution without a doubt. I hope we'll go for young guys: De Jong, Arthur and try with Alena and if we are lucky maybe 1 or 2 of them could succeed but until they develop Thiago would be a perfect solution for us since I really don't see any other (available) midfielder who would immediately improve our starting 11.
EDIT: That being said I would not pay over 50 mil for Thiago.
Look, nobody knows what formation we will play.
In EV's 442, Savic would be a better option than Paulinho/Gomes, players who played a lot in the first part of a season.
So, if EV wants that type of 442, Savic could probably work, but he is too expensive.
For 433, I don't have faith in any player, because, I have wrote 100s of times, no matter what we'll do with 433, we'll have lots of problems:
1. if you buy Thiago, CMs are nowhere close to Xavi-Iniesta
2. you don't have Dani Alves as a 4th midfielder like in those days
3. you don't have young alien Messi
4. you don't have Messi as a RW
5. you don't have 2-3 attackers who defend (Pedro). None of our 3 attackers will defend too much.
6. if we'll play without Suarez, imo, that will be a horror show with Messi as a Cdm-Cm, Dembele hogging touchline and being lost majority of times, and Cou as the only attacker, who is not actually attacker and is quite slow and weak.
7. if you bench Raki, our defense will suffer even more. We will have zero muscles and aggression in midfield.
8. not to mention our short, onedimensional attack who can play only through the ground
So, it is almost irrelevant whether we buy Thiago, Pjanic or Eriksen.
Our team is a huge mess for 433 currently.
I don't mean anything bad, but as long as this version of dropping-deep-Messi is here, I don't know whether we can play any 433 at all.
So, maybe EV is not that dumb and maybe 442 or something new is a better for right now, since Messi as a deep Cm-Cdm can play only as a false 9, and then you have zero players in the box.
I know, that worked during Pep.
But then we had 3 true attackers.
Messi was an attacker.
He wasn't dropping THAT deep back then.
He was faster, more lethal etc.
And one more time, other 2 guys were a real attackers.