That Leoni player, who I’ve never heard of, sounds like exactly the profile of player we should be in for. Hope that Joyce speaking publicly about our interest means we’ve signed him.
Him and Guehi with then presumably outs of Nunez, Chiesa, Tsimikas, Doak, Morton (done deal?) I’d be happy with that. Delighted, in fact.
Were we to get Isak as well then that would pretty much be the greatest transfer window since Kenny and Hansen.
After so many failures with Italian players you never know we might have finally found one that will be good enough for us after all they are very good at defending.
It’s pretty much who we’ve bought. We haven’t bought Totti, Baggio or Del Piero have we. We bought two with injury issues, one who had an attitude issue and Dossena.
I joke every time it crops up, fact people treat it with seriousness. The Italians at Chelsea never had issues.
I haven’t seen 10 games and I wouldn’t believe anyone who claimed they had! Still, when his name was first linked a few weeks ago, I looked at Parma clips, and the main thing that impressed me was Leoni’s strength. In one sequence he bumped Lukaku off the ball and held his ground really well, which is remarkable for an 18 year old.
The other thing that caught my eye was that he looked to have a turn of pace, which you don’t usually associate with such a big lad.
Obviously our recruitment team will know everything there is to know to make an informed judgement, but based on the limited action I’ve seen, I’d be happy if we signed him.
We’ve been trying to buy similar players over multiple transfer windows, so definitely part of a continuous strategy not a panic measure (the lad at Bournmouth this summer and the lad at Chelsea spring to mind for example)
I used to work with an Italian lad that was over in the UK for a few years to dodge the military draft, he didn’t settle well over here either. From the discussions we had it was basically down to their lifestyle back home being all about big family groups living together and the women doing everything for their boys so they didn’t have the life skills or emotional maturity to live outside that - maybe we need to sign a nonna or two for the backroom team.