Hearing things off the social circle that we are seriously in for Barcola now.
I personally don’t want this Prima donna please.Firstly, another 100 million down the drain. Guy can’t press to save his life, has poor finishing.He is nothing but Gakpo with braids. 
And for me he really blocks Rio’s path as we have Munoz,Gakpo and Rio already for left wing. Granted Munoz can work from the right sometimes.
I dunno what has happened to our data filters. Why can’t we find the next Mane , Salah anymore. Why are we acting like Galacticos again after last summers window. Looks like no lessons learnt. And, more over I don’t want new manager to be handicapped or sabotaged and pressured by a 100 million spent on a PSG reject, especially when the guy accountable aka Hughes is already leaving.
Please find the next jewel and potential in the making and let the manager spend on a proper back up for an established centre back and right back.
Maybe there is no next Mane or Salah.
I cant think of any. Granted our scouts will know infinitely more players but there don´t seem to be a lot of obvious candidates. Maybe Minteh.
We can, these are the guys clubs are asking £100m+ for now.
Barcloa is kind of the same profile as Mane and Salah. He’s a known name without ever really breakng through as a world class player.
But as @redfanman says Barcola in 2016 probably costs 40-50m. Now it’s 100m+.
I saw earlier today in The Times that Arsenal want Ezri Konsa, but don’t want to pay the £60m Villa want for him.
I’ve never been able to decide if he’s someone I’d like Liverpool to buy or not.
What do people think; would he be a sensible signing for us, with our current centre back situation? 28 years old, lots of PL experience, homegrown.
I think its the right sort of profile we need in terms of age and experience, but 60m seems steep for that profile. You’d imagine there’d be cheaper comparable options in Germany or Portugal, but Villa are financially stretched so you could see it being a deal that could look a lot more attractive if Villa were felt the need to negotiate.
I’m a bit surprised we didn’t seem to have any interest in Maxime Esteve who just went to Leipzig for £25m
Don’t know him but I guess we’ll be interested in him next year when his new price tag is £80m.
I mean…the price is low but I’m not sure he was what we needed.
Solid but he would neither be an experienced stop gap nor a “likely” future starter but at his age would need game time. Hence I don’t think the fit was good.
Realistically though can Van Dijk be relied on to play so much this year again?
You´d imagine a big drop off is coming. Especially after a world cup year.
There will be a drop off and there has been for a couple of seasons already
Even with the expected further drop off , he’s still our best defender and one of the best in the league.
His minutes need to be managed.
I think we can get 2 years out of Van Dijk before he hangs in his boots. Possibly tie him down to a further 2 year in December/Jan extension.
It’s imperative that he remain there as much as possible so that the experience of playing alongside Van Dijk helps Jaquet and Leoni.
But then doesnt that mean there would be plenty of minutes for someone like Esteve?
He is our best defender but I think realistically he MUST play a lot fewer minutes than last season to conserve what we have left of him.
Centre back is an odd one. You look at names linked with us in the past like Inacio and Diomande from Sporting, Antonio Silva from Benfica and Ordonez at Brugge. All highly touted as the next big prospect but all still at their original clubs.
Wonder why we’ve never really pursued those but also why no one else has. Instead we got Leoni and Jacquet, both of whom had less experience but weren’t exactly cheaper because of it.
We’re going to have to do something at CB soon but I get the feeling that unless they get someone who can play a role at both CB and RB (a Gomez/White type) we may well see that CB can kicked down the road to next summer as RB is a more pressing issue.
Then Quansah comes back, Gomez probably goes and we’ll see where Virg is at, how the Jacquet and Leoni have settled and make a call on what type of CB we need then.
It’s not what I’d do but unless we can find either a cheap stop gap like Geertruida or a long term loan-to-buy option like Arsenal did with Hincapie last summer we may well see us go with the four options we have and hope one of the very young lads can step up in an emergency.
Its just their trick to balance the books, not really a real loan.
We’ve signed 4-5 young center backs for the U21s since last season. Hopefully at least one of them can become a regular for us.
Oh I get that and that’s kind of what I mean. I suspect we’d have to do some kind of trickery like this if we were to secure a costly target.
You’d hope one of those young lads can come through but it feels very early for any of them.
I’ve never heard of him, I think, but maybe the club opted against signing another young centre back because they’ve already sign two for the first team + those highly rated U18 lads? Maybe they are looking at a more experienced player - or to keep Gomez as the fourth centre back (shudders)?
Lacroix at 55M?
Good player. Prem proven. Bridges the age gap between Van Dijk and the younger breed.
I’d take him but I think I read some reliable journalists reporting he was off to Chelsea. With Jacquet here, bringing him would have made a lot of sense, I think.