Surely it’s a no for Curtis Jones. He’s a good player and Slot used him a lot as one of the four main midfielders. If anything we need to add another, a fifth option Slot will use, whether that is Bajcetic taking his chance or a new signing.
Elliott is a very good player too, and his goal just then against Brighton will do his cause no harm. He has barely featured and with rumours of Newcastle being interested, maybe others, he might be sold. I will be sad to see it if it happens, but it might be on the cards. I would be very surprised if Curtis Jones is sold.
I don’t think it’s so much about that. Of course Wirtz is an upgrade on Harvey. He’s likely an upgrade on Szobo too.
It’s the outlay of the massive transfer fee AND him likely needing to be one of the highest paid players in the squad from day 1 in order to convince him to not go to Bayern. There’s no such thing as a surefire hit in football. M’bappe, Neymar, Coutinho - all recent examples of players that went for over 100M and failed to live up to the hype/price after the move - though M’bappe still has a chance to come good. Still, when you’re spending that kind of money, you need to be able to be as sure as you can that it’ll work out, because if it doesn’t it can set a club back years, unless that club is Man City of course…
Bayern still seems most likely, but I’m glad that we are in there. Wirtz is a very good player indeed and would definitely up our game in the final third. I’m not sure if we would sign a striker in addition, or deploy Wirtz as some sort of false nine. I’m happy to leave that up to Slot
Of these, I’d say perhaps Bellingham, and maybe at a stretch Bale and Kane? 5 out of 25 isn’t exactly “rarely goes wrong”. And even so many of these are debatable, with only the Chelsea players being the gamechanger you’d want at that price. Not that they’ve done much with that either, mind you. It’s more carnage the further down you go that list.
Then again, say the club sell Morton and Elliott for a combined sum of around 60 million pounds - I wouldn’t be against Liverpool buying Wirtz for 100 million pounds. I can’t believe I’m saying that, though… But it’s Slot’s comments about Szoboszlai’s no. 8 role (and his relative profligacy in the final third) that made me think about this. Slot wants his own De Bruyne, I guess.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know which players could be signed as alternatives in case Wirtz rejects Liverpool?
My concerns about this signing are will we have enough left over for the other areas that need strengthening? I feel we especially need to change up top and would hate to see us relying on the same 6 next season.
