The Unreliable Rumours Discussion Thread (Part 2)

I will quit watching football for the year if we help Barca out of that mess they created. The players overhyped anyway, definitely not a player worth the salary he is on.

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We will have him for a free and pay 20% of his wages…

Helps them out after all.

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…and only give him two games, Utd home and away. With the U23’s for the rest of the year.

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We have a no dickhead rule. Bernardo fails it.

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That’s a bit extreme, but I admit I haven’t watched him much since his Ajax days when he was top drawer

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On the Ajax salary he would be a bargain.

Form in football is fickle. He was a very good player, but players who have run through the grinder the way he has for the las 2 years often never get their spark back. It’s easy to then say he was always over rated, but these are human beings and being put through the meat grinder and made to feel like shit on a daily basis for a couple of years definitely dulls the enthusiasm.

I think the Ajax version of him would add something really interesting to our midfield. This version would have to go and rehab his reputation somewhere like a Seville or Monaco before I’d be ready to take a chance on him.

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de Ligt was the overrated one from that team. De Jong was actually good.

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Apparently deal is done with Barca.

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Makes sense, Haaland can cover all positions and still play CF.

So this Nunes that we’re apparently interested in spending €40m on… Can someone tell me about him and give any indication on whether it’s plausible? Also why didn’t we go for him earlier if he’s been on our radar - because we couldn’t flog Ox perhaps? (Too lazy to google :wink:)

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Excerpt from an article in The Athletic (regarding Wolves’ interest in Nunes):

ā€œWhen Pep Guardiola says this, people take notice: ā€œI would say that Matheus Nunes is one of the best players in the world today.ā€

While such praise will bump up Nunes’ price tag, considerably raise his profile and perhaps lessen Wolves’ prospects of landing one of the hottest properties in European football, is Guardiola right?

Nunes only started 12 league games in Sporting’s title season (he’s been a late bloomer, only coming to prominence in 2018-19 when a few appearances for Estoril, the club Wolves signed Toti Gomes and Chiquinho from, were all Sporting needed to convince them to buy him aged 20 for around half a million quid), but this year the now 23-year-old has come to the fore alongside Palhinha in central midfield, starting 28 of 30 matches plus a further six in the Champions League.

Nunes is a lot of things. He’s a box of tricks — pirouetting past some players, dinking the ball over the heads of others — but he’s also combative: he wins three interceptions per game on average. He’s quick, he’s direct, he’s thrilling and his range of through balls belongs in an art gallery. He doesn’t shirk his defensive duties either, with an average of 22 pressures per game in the past year, which is higher than Moutinho and Neves — albeit Wolves aren’t under instruction to be the biggest pressers. He will tackle and he will track back, he’s a bit of a unit at 6ft, but he’ll also average three completed dribbles per game.

You can see what Guardiola is getting at.ā€

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Cool, thanks @koptician. Just wondering if the doper is having a lend with his ā€˜one of the best in the world’ line - cheaty used to telegraph interest in players to con ManUtd into buying them; there is really no need for that anymore so I wonder if this is their new strategy to tempt us into interest. Obviously we’re going to do our due diligence etc but just a thought as it seems a stretch to say that about a player with so little experience

These days I reckon we’re far, far, too professional to buy a player we haven’t done full due diligence on, just to get in before another interested team.

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Agreed. Just thought the dopers comment surprising

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Another portuguese? It seems to me that the media are counting 2+2=5 here.

ā€œLiverpool have injuries, they need an extra midfielder (never mind what Klopp says). Guardiola has once said that Nunes is the next coming of Maradona, so LFC must be interested. Oh and their last two big transfers were players from the Portuguese league. Makes sense, right?ā€

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i still have nightmares about antonio nunez. without signing even more nunez/nunes. Don’t thin i could cope with worrying about more than Darwin at this moment.

i agree, we would surely do our own scouting, background checks, and hacking of the Man City scouting networking on any player before bidding for him! :wink:

If we are in for him he was probably likely to be on our list for next summer alongside Bellingham. It wouldn’t surprise me if we went back there as well to ask but have been rebuked.

Guess we will see if it’s bollocks or not very soon but we’ve been linked in the past even before Darwin Nunez so it wouldn’t surprise me.

Haven’t a fig what he is like, Missed only one game from injury in 2 years and that was COVID-19 so there is that positive.

Also a Brazilian by birth

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Nunes looks to have real quality. He’s available with a release clause of 60 mil Euro, I believe.

If we truly want him, I think we’ll have to pay that. I believe he’ll be gone by no later than Jan to a big club, and I’ve felt for a couple of seasons now that we need to add a top-drawer CM, since Thiago is oft-injured, Fabinho always has a clunker in him, and Hendo/Millie are older/less effective.

Nunes ticks all the boxes for me as a potentially great #8, and Klopp and co’s recent propensity for Portuguese players leads me to believe these links are a bit more than tenuous. He appears to have a great eye for passing, has good passing range, and his dribbling/ball advancement is top tier. if 60 mil is the price, then that’s what we should pay, doesn’t necessarily rule out Bellingham next Summer either, as this is Thiago’s last year of his contract if I’m not mistaken. I’d rather we spend this now with the knowledge that we’ll have to potentially replace Thiago and Milner, as well as look at a reduced role for Hendo next season.

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