Maybe he will want to, maybe not.
Maybe he will want to, but maybe it won’t happen this summer (will have two years left).
Whatever and whenever it happens, it’s not necessarily the end of the world for us. We find another solution. Joe Gomez himself was one of the pretty much out of the blue ones.
Well Matip remaining this fit was a positive aspect never anyone thought of. And there’s no point changing the CB pairings just to accommodate all. I will understand if he wants to go.
But the calls for us to sell him I am not comfortable with. We don’t know if he’s still that good or his performances has reduced unless he gets a run of few games. With what happened last season and how we want to have a competitive squad across all positions, I would rather he stays.
In fairness he missed basically two straight years of football - he’s been fit for about 4 months now but we still don’t really know what level of fitness that is.
Preseason with us and then a loan until January at a PL Club that can guarantee him games to get a chance to go to the World Cup.
Seen a twitter person who seemed to know his stuff with injuries saying he won’t be 100% until next season and this was said during his injury last year. Maybe he’s not 100% still
Usually takes the same time a player have been sidelined to get back to his best. Might be longer in Joes case because this was his third big injury.
To me it looks like Virgil made a huge step to get back to his best in the last few weeks. Took him many games.
For Joe it must be very frustrating to train so much but not to play.
I hate to use the word, but this is character-building. I think if he has the patience to slowly grind at it, and keep faith in himself and the manager, he will surely be back in.
He has a great character coming back from so many injuries. But surely his head will drop eventually has no luck at all.
I doubt he’ll be with us next season, it’s probably best for all parties if he found a new club to settle at.
We need players we can depend on and the lad needs game time when he is fit which he’s obviously not gonna get here.
By that logic we should go back down to 3 senior centre-backs…
I say we keep Nat around…he’d be more content with being back up option.
Or get whatever we can for both & sign another back up.
Or, we could just realise that the season is really long, and that all our players will get their opportunities. No one is a guaranteed starter, not even Virgil. If he lets his standards slip, you can be fairly sure that Konaté will be after that spot fast.
Except, Virgil is a guaranteed starter. As is Alisson, as is Robbo, as is Trent, as is Fab, as is Mo and Mane.
They all play every game unless injured, suspended or called up to national side/micky mouse game against a Shrewsbury.
Think the manager made himself pretty clear it’s very much dependent on who is performing best. At the moment those players are, but there is no guarantee of that.
I find the logic behind moving Gomez on because he doesn’t play enough and bringing someone else in as cover… interesting.
Gomez clearly isn’t fully back to it but still hasn’t been a disaster. He’s providing depth as injuries can happen at any time and not letting us down when he does play like someone like Phillips could. We don’t have to make changes to accommodate Gomez we stick to our best way of playing.
Even from a squad point of view, domestically Gomez counts towards the 8 senior slots that you can only use a homegrown player for. But in Europe there are 4 senior slots you can only use for club developed players. Kelleher, Gomez and Trent are our only ones currently.
Getting rid of Gomez (unless its for Connor Coady or someone else who was in our academy) means the squad we could use in Europe would actually be a man smaller not 1 in 1 out, just 1 out.
Oh and Phillips doesn’t count as club developed so no we can’t use him even if he was anywhere near Gomez in terms of talent (hes not).
If the arguments are that we have too much uncertainty over injuries at CB I can kind of agree but with age, current high standing etc. taken into account from a long term and business point of view it makes much more sense to let Matip go for what might currently be a bigger fee than for Gomez and bring a young CB more suited to the LCB role.
All 4 of Matip, Gomez, Rhys Williams and Konate are much more comfortable and natural at RCB and VvD is comfortable and natural at both. Currently when VvD doesn’t play Gomez, Konate or Williams have to play on their not quite as good side.
IF we were to make any moves at CB this summer it should be to bring in a left sided CB like Sven Botman, Benoit Badiashile or Duje Caleta-Car in. They’d be a much more of a natural partner fit for Gomez/Matip/Konate on the RCB but there’d also be no problem with VvD on the right and one of those possible signings on the left if they’re the two in form and available.
I think there’ll be too much going on this summer but if we had to make moves I’d have Konate as dedicated RCB, Botman as dedicated LCB, VvD on either side partnering whichever of those two is in best form etc. taking rests and rotation into account. Gomez and Williams as the cover. Matip and Phillips moved on to pay nearly full fee for Botman and to create some room on the wage bill as Matip is probably paid more than it’d take to bring in Botman.
Happy he got a game and Trent got rest, Replacing Trent’s attacking prowess is always going to be difficult. He did have a few moments where he was lost with the ball, but overall he did good. Hope he keeps getting games at RB and gives a solid defensive performance at the minimum.
Didn’t expect him to match the attacking prowess of Trent, but he provided the defensive solidity as expected. So happy for him. Onwards and upwards Joe. 
I’ll probably get shot down in flames for this, but could there be a chance that Joe could play DM? He’s quick and he can tackle. He’s decent on the ball too. His perceived deficit in the air would be less of an issue in that position as well.
Just a thought. Be kind.
You already know how this is going to go.