Leaving the people who are injured and rating who would be the first choices (till the injured ones come back)
RB - Ramsay , Frimpong , Araujo
CB - VVD , Araujo (Jacquet , Leoni and Gomez are all injured at the moment
LB - kerkez , tsimikas
Our defence is bare bones at this moment. Jacquet should be returning back quickly enough but we barely still have enough.
I’d even keep Chambers in the club (if the club hasn’t made the decision to loan him out yet). We can probably keep hold of him and then decide to send him out just before the closing of the transfer window.
I’m of a different view. I think we should have made more / better use of the loan market over the last 10-15 years.
Our rivals have frequently dipped into it and they have generally had more money for signings than us. And, we’re not blessed with the same reliable stream of players coming through the acadrmy either
I’ve just woken up on the news, and it was the first thought crossing my mind. Yeah, Anelka, isn’t it?
On paper, it looks shrewd though, seeing that there are some good youngsters in the squad who must see a path towards a starting place. He can cover cb and rb, and is an experienced , authoritative player. Tall as well, and good at headers, which is paramount in the PL. Fast, great acceleration, strong. Entering his prime.
Some questions though: will he remain fit? Will he adapt to the PL, the climate, to his new surroundings? The club will no doubt do everything to help him feel at home as much as possible.
In my book, this is a move which has a lot of positive potential. And well done to the club for keeping this under wraps until everything was sorted. I love this!
By now, we’re likely familiar with every available center-back on the planet who could also slot in as a right-back and Iraola was surely given a list to evaluate. I’m fairly certain he had a significant say in this loan—perhaps even choosing the player from a shortlist or something similar. He would have carefully weighed the associated risks against the immense benefits. That’s not something I’m worried about; Iraola knows exactly what needs to be done. So, I’m looking forward to seeing him play—it’s one less thing for us to worry about.
I completely get that, but teams like Barca don’t usually disperse of their Captains in that manner and also, they are not guaranteed to sign Rodri.
If we, Liverpool made a Player captain in January and were then offloading him 7 months later would you not raise questions?
I appreciate that they loaned out Ter Stegen the original Captain but he is 34 and was after game time for the World Cup.
It’s a good move to get a good CB on loan in the circumstances, considering current injuries and presumably budget issues.
But with Leoni and Jacquet fit we still need a permanent top class CB. We’ll have a new keeper next season and VVD can’t keep doing this forever. Even if we think one or both of the 2 youngsters is the future, we still need 4 fit high level CB’s to challenge for titles. Gomez is a bonus, but may as well assume he isn’t at the club because of his constant injuries.
This signing is better than nothing, but still need to sign a mid 20’s good defender in my view.
Also, he’s apparently the captain. Why the hell would a club let their captain go on loan? Alarm bells are ringing.
At Barça, the players choose the captain, not the coach. Flick had apparently just told him he didn’t plan on using him as a starter when our offer came in; and no, Ter Stegen was loaned out because Barça replaced him—it had nothing to do with the World Cup. Ter Stegen was no longer in the German squad anyway due to his injury.
That’s just how they do things there. They simply needed the squad spot to register someone else.
They’re also trying to sign Rodri, I imagine being able to offload Araujo’s wages will make it easier for them to fund that, after their initial offer was rejected.
Context is everything.
He plays on the right. Same as Cubarsi.
Same as Christensen who is back up
Same as Eric Garcia who can play as RB also
Same as Alvaro Cortes from the academy
AND on 250k wages for a Barcelona team constantly looking at the finances…
And in need of left sided CBs, hence the consideration of Laporte and possibly Romero.
I saw it too; a lot of people are getting worked up about the fact that he was in Jerusalem—given his faith—and there are photos of him praying there. That’s why some people are saying we shouldn’t sign “someone like that,” and so on. What kind of fans do we have?
