At least it was a nice dream. I suppose it was unrealistic for us to spend that amount of money on 1 generational talent.
I do have small bit of regret that he didn’t come but if he had gone to Man City, i would have started on the bottle of rum for week with a massive chocolate cake to ease my sorrow.
Real Madrid are astute and a glamourous club, where many footballers go to reach the pinnacle of their career. Real have strengthened their midfield for at least another good 5 years.
Real Madrid fans are not easy bunch of fans to please. Every footballer in that club has to play perfectly in each game. It is a very demanding club and the Spanish press are just as bad as our lot in the UK.
Their starting midfield even in the most recent one was Modric, Kroos, and Casirmio. In what way is this is a marker of their succesful transition from the old guard?
Their age has been understood as an issue to manage for several years and their failure to successfully evolve past that, with multiple aborted attempts to do so, is largely understood to be one of the main reasons they have failed to turn this undoubted quality into more frequent titles
What reboot? Even as recently as last season they started the CL final with the 3 from the old guard in CM. They have bought players, but over a 4-5 year period of trying to address that transition they have so far not actually managed it. They are getting credit for a task they simply havent yet achieved.
Real Madrid are unfortunately in a different stratosphere than us when it comes to player pull. They could namecheck a player in the media and you can almost guarantee they will sign that player the following season. What’s more, that player will probably burn bridges to get to RM (thanks to pressure from RM) and therefore he will be signed for less than other players can. That’s the power of a brand like RM have. They have this unique hypnotic power over the world’s players.
They also got extremely lucky. They managed to trade a 35 year old Alonso + 25m for a 23 year old Kroos because the idiots at Bayern wanted to play hard ball on wages, which they ended up losing on anyway with Alonso’s demands.
Again back to the pull factor, and this applied to Tchouameni We looked to be getting him then RM showed up. RM really are the dream destination for every non-anglophone without exception, and for a good majority of anglophones as well. We are fighting in the bantamweight division and them in the heavyweight. We can’t really expect to compete most of the time.
Sometimes though even we’ll get lucky and being a ‘Galactico’ won’t be the number one priority of a target and something like game time or playing in the PL might. I’m still holding out hope that this applies to Jude.
Right, so they started the most experienced players in the biggest game of the season and that means they’ve not prepared for a future without them?
Camavinga, Tchouameni and Valverde will all have played more than 2,500 minutes by seasons end, possibly closer to 3,000. In Valverde’s case way more than that and probably the most of any midfielder of theirs.
That’s what you call a transition. A mix of experience and youth for a couple seasons rather than chucking the kids in from day one and moving the older players out the door at the same time. Then you add Bellingham to that mix, possibly the best of the lot.
They’ve seen where they are aging and have brought in players before they need them so they aren’t expected to be starters from day one. That’s the textbook definition of a transition.
Now imagine if we’d have done the same over the last 3-4 years, wouldn’t we be in such a better position than we are? Instead, we’re pretty trying to reboot the entire unit in one summer. And we’re partly being forced into doing so because we’ve got three leaving on bosmans, two others the wrong side of 30 who struggle to stay fit and Fabinho who’s legs have fallen off.
I’d be absolutely delighted if our midfield reboot had been half as good as Real Madrid’s. They’re going to have two of the players we wanted and have the luxury of not having to throw them in the deep end on day one and expect them to turn the ship around.
As long as he doesn’t go City I dont care where he goes. Our owners are reluctent to buy a player who could be here for 12 years or 4 then double your money when you sell him.
I have no issue with praising their planning. But it absolutely has not been demonstrated as actually producing a successful outcome, which is what I’ve pushed back on.
But even significant mitigation is needed in the praise for that planning. They have been dealing with challenges for 4-5 years of basing their team around an aged midfield (not a challenge for later, but for the present season). The fact we still haven’t actually seen the evidence of their ability to manage that definitely should factor in to how much praise they get for their planning.
On paper it looks like a good midfield even before they add Bellingham. But they havent yet demonstrated it on the pitch. Not only that two of the three are really yet to establish that they are viable long term options for their midfield. Valverde has played most of his important games for them as a forward. Camavinga has so far been a little disappointing, looking good in short cameos off the bench but highly criticized in games he’s started. Really the only reliable run of good performances hes had there in 2 years is filling in for Mendy at LB.
So overall my point is lets wait until these players actually demonstrate they can effectively replace the old guard before we start praising them for it.
Dempsey was back in the Roy days, there was nothing good to discuss about the club so the only thing we could do was moan about who we werent’ getting next.
