Haven’t seen Adrian in a while in training or match squads. Wonder is he off this month due to this reason. Other reasons including his goalkeeper in ability but mainly to allow a new signing.
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Seen Alaba is set for Real Madrid.
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Could go for his team mate Jerome Boateng is 32 and his contract is up in 5 months time. Bayen are resigned to losing him in the summer.
For me he would be a good stop-gap till you get VvD back again.
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Most Champion League teams are not going to play United football last night, or Big Sam football, they will attack.
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And buying Boeteng, a 32-year-old player, means that Gomez will have one more chance to re-establish himself.
We can also buy both Ben White/Tarkowski and Boeteng - a new player will be a homegrown one, while Boeteng is going to replace an outgoing non-homegrown player, most likely Origi.
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I know it’s only a short term solution but Boateng’s injury rate is reportedly awful. Could we trust him for 6 months playing every week
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Real Madrid have reached an agreement to sign David Alaba as a free agent on a 4-year deal. The Bayern defender will earn around €11m-a-season. (Source: MARCA) https://t.co/yDFAzmHjys
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There are two obvious things to say to that
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We do have Alisson. We’re allowed to rely on our Keeper to dig us out from time to time.
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So don’t play Hendo against the big teams.
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If you look at the heat map v’s Utd we played pretty much the same line we did with Van Dijk, our fullbacks got as far forward as they usually did. Thiago played slightly deeper but this looked clear to give him some space and force Fernandes to keep having to chase him around the pitch (Fernandes was completly invisibile btw).
The problem was simply we failed to deliver from those areas, be it forwards spurning chances, fullbacks crossing poorly, no runners from midfield arriving into the box etc.
I said it in the post match thread, Henderson as left center back negates a lot of the offensive abilities Van Dijk brought (including his recovery pace). So I agree with Mascott, having Hendo and Matip seems our best option for now… This also means Fabinho further forward, and Thiago closer to goal… All win wins.
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I guess for clarity thats *after tax, which makes it a very very expensive deal. Worth it for Real probably he’s a great player.
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And all it takes is one better timed ball from them and we’re totally exposed. The reason we can play that line with Gomez and VVD is because of their positional play, reading of the game and recovery pace.
Henderson and Fabinho did really well but one better timed ball and we’d have been in serious trouble. Also, most of the ball went through Thiago. We didn’t play those diagonals as Thiago is there to dictate the play.
I get the idea but I didn’t see it in the execution of what we did at the weekend. I also hate the fact we’re pulling two of our best engine room midfielders out of the middle of the park.
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Utd are one of the best counter attacking teams in the league, and we pretty much nullified them on every counter. One of the benefits from Fabinho playing no.6 is he covers better, so we are less open anyway (if he remembers to track runners again!)
You have a point that against maybe City its too risky, but against the vast portion of teams? I think it’s more than fine.
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This is true, but it was also true with Gomez and Van Dijk in the team as well.
Let’s not forget who our centre back partnership was when Villa put seven past us.
It’s OK to concede a goal. All defences do. The reason why we’re twitchy about this at the minute is that our front three are very underperforming at the minute.
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We did well but there were a couple calls flagged that had the linesman let it run, im not sure VAR would have helped us out.
I think there’s a big difference both in confidence of our team and the confidence of the other team when we’ve two centre mids playing there instead of two centre backs.
It’s an interesting thought that Henderson is there to fill in for Virgil’s attacking contributions perhaps more so than his defensive ones but if he’s mainly going to pass it to Thiago anyway then he’s not really doing what has been suggested.
It’s probably not fair to judge it on the United game alone as they weren’t coming forward much until the very end but im hoping this isn’t our solution to the end of the season.
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True, but the positioning play, recovery speed and the aura around those two generally means we’re less susceptible as teams don’t think they can get at us as easily.
And whilst they played that Villa game that was an aberration. It’s akin to saying we don’t need to worry about the front three because we beat Palace 7-0.
We need to find a way to get them forward line firing again and maybe Hendo and Fab is the best answer we have right now. But it feels like a big loss for the midfield not to have those two available there and that could be causing us issues too.
There’s no perfect fix and maybe it’s a game by game decision based on what we think the opposition will do.
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No I’d rather have an average centre back that isn’t made of weetabix as cover
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Wow, so we bid for Alaba. Interesting.
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I wouldn’t believe Romano, he’s full of shit, Reddy said we talked to his agent before we signed Thiago and nothing more. I’d believe Reddy every day of the week.
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That’s a low risk sentence anyway. He can throw a few clubs in there, like “they wanted/made a bid for him”. No big deal, didn’t expect Alaba anyway. From Real’s perspective, will be interesting to see who takes Marcelo, who’s got a contract until 2022. It seems like Alaba coming in isn’t really connected that much to the future of Ramos, who might still stay.
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BBC rumours page:
Liverpool and Tottenham are looking into a possible deal for Inter’s Italy midfielder Nicolo Barella, 23. (Calciomercato)
Liverpool and Barcelona have not given up hope of signing Bayern Munich and Austria defender David Alaba, 28, despite Real Madrid being close to a deal. (Sport1)
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