We should see some resolution soon. I think Osimhen to Galatasaray has happened, for a good sum too, so Napoli have got the money for Nunez.
I was a long term fan of Nunez, sticking up for him long after the tide had turned. I still think he has all the ingredients for a top striker, and half wonder how he would do in the new attack with Wirtz supplying him and width coming from the fullbacks.
However, I think that ship has sailed. Slot appeared to have less and less faith in Nunez as the season wore on, and now that he has won the league at the first time of asking, I fully expect the side to be refreshed to his requirement moving forward, and much as I want to see it, I cannot see a place here for Darwin Nunez.
Don’t think we will get more than €60m for Nunez but Napoli have enough money anyway with the sales of Osimen and (don’t forget) Kvaratskhelia in January.
Pedro was also interesting to me. In a summer where options seem limited apart from an unrealistic Isak and a questionable Ekitike. If we don’t sign a player, it doesn’t mean we think he’s not the right fit for us. We have no idea actually. Money and timing can play a part, a player can decide to go elsewhere, etc. There are many players moving, a number of which would be good for us, but for different reasons, we logically can’t have all of them. We had plenty of opposite examples.
He is a player who has been identified as one we had people at the club eyeing, but it is is also the case that there was not even a whisper that we had any interest in taking that any further. And this is a not a summer where we can ascribe that to satisfaction in our existing options given the obviousness of that not being the case.
No one has said that actually signing a player is the mark of whether we think he is a fit for us, but in a summer when it was clear he was moving and we were making moves in his area of the pitch we showed zero interest, despite a pretty reasonable fee.
So I’d say that in fact in some areas we really can a pretty reasonable idea of what is going on, even with as closely held as we play our cards these days.
Monitoring Joao Pedro isn’t news really, every big(ger) club in the league probably did that. I have no idea what was our level of interest. Sometimes we find out things from the past, from main actors, that weren’t even reported at the time. It’s absolutely possible that we think he’s not the right player for us right now and that’s it. I can accept that, but I don’t know. Or maybe we also won’t invest in a new forward before we sell some more first. And it’s a question now how much does Jota suddenly and unfortunately leaving change our plan.
We were linked to Joao Pedro before he went to Watford. There were even stories of us trying to gazump them if memory serves.
I think it’s entirely fair then to assume that had we thought he was right for us this summer that we’d have been in the conversation.
The fact we don’t appear to have been and that Chelsea were heavily linked to Ekitike too suggests to me that he may well be our target. But, we’ll only push forward with that once Nunez and maybe a couple others are out the door.
There are flops that at the moment of signing “should’ve” been quality, but turned out to be either less quality than expected or not fit enough or a combination of both. And a lot of the fit factor being down to luck, or if we have enough clues from the outside, if they’re professional enough…
And there are flops that already at the moment of signing, a lot of people were at least doubtful or already knew more or less that it’s a mistake or a miss match.
Graham for example recently said that in retrospective, he would do the Keita deal again. Surely there are more. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t repeat transfers like Carroll, Balotelli, Benteke, Nunez… and surely there are more of those, too.
Interesting, I had that with other players. With Aquilani, I remember being disappointed from the first second I heard it’s about to happen. That task was too much for him, considering his injury issues and who he was replacing. When fit, a fine player (I used to compare his style like a lesser version of Fabregas), but I think his Roma time already showed that he’s seriously affected already and any buyer should really think twice.
Some of the names that got me excited were Kewell (couldn’t believe the player we were getting for that fee, even in the context of that time), Keane, Cole, Suarez (probably the most I’ve been excited as a package, Wirtz might be close), Sahin, Keita, etc. Would remember a few more. There aren’t many because we signed a lot of players that were either relatively unknown or untested at the top level.
Yeah Harry Kewell was world class for a time at Leeds and I remember also being excited we might see the same; something we really missed during the Fergie era. Joe Cole was another as (in theory) he could bring an ability to play through compact defences that we really missed. When I look at our current side, I’m excited about Wirtz for sure but think it’s really what we do at CF and CB that are most likely to determine our season.
Well especially as he wasn’t started because we had to pay a clause apparently (I thought that was bollocks but I do feel it might have had a bit of truth).
