Shakhtar’s Darijo Srna to replace the departing Julian Ward.
What?
See: Mudryk’s sale.
Can’t believe there isn’t a midfielder who would come in and improve us.
Kone for one, must be available.
Caciedo would move if we put the money up.
Both young, full of energy and win at least double the amount of duels than our current lot.
Worried about space? Just unregister someone. Plenty of candidates for that.
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Is anyone watching Gladbach regularly who are 8th in the Bundesliga?
If that’s Kouadio Kone.
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So we lose three midfielders in the summer, i wonder how many we will buy.
Doing well if he’s got them to 8th playing on his own.
I watched him vs Dortmund and he locked down Bellingham. Very effective defensively.
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Buy, buy, buy - for the obvious reason!
We don’t just need a defensive midfielder we need one great in possession, as part of our defensive woes is down to giving the ball back to the opposition cheaply
Kone’s at the very top for dribbles completed to be fair. He should be able to play a Wijnaldum like role, retaining the ball under pressure, keeping it simple and providing legs off the ball.
And he’s fast. I know some of the Guardiola lovers on here seem to scoff at the idea of signing quick players but pace is definitely important and clearly an attribute our midfield has none of.
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We need midfielders who can press, counter press, track runners and win duels, that needs legs and intelligence…
We have enough creative players such as Thiago, Trent… our primary focus must be to control again through some physicality.
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We already have far too many technical type players around the midfield or in between the lines - Thiago, Keita, Elliot, Carvalho, Jones. Gakpo looks like he belongs in here too.
We are getting overran in there every game. We’re bottom of the pile for duels won. It’s so easy to play against our midfield.
We need battlers and athletic players. That obviously doesn’t mean some carthorse that wouldn’t look out of place at Everton, but more emphasis needs to be placed on physical ability.
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Disagree in that the player also needs to be able to resist the press and to link play because at the moment when teams press we are forced to play in a direction where they can win the ball or we just give a crap pass.
In my 1st statement I should have used also, because we do need someone strong in what you said but he must have the attributes as mentioned. I haven’t seen Kone, so can’t comment on his suitability.
Yeah it’s clear that we need more athleticism in our central midfield.
If we’re signing 2 new CM’s next summer, my pick stylistically would be:
- One who is primarily more of an athletic one, but can also play well enough.
- Another one who is more of the controlling/playmaking type, but can respond to dynamic needs, younger than Thiago obviously.
So basically two players who would stylistically be able to do what peak Henderson and Thiago did/do. I think that would be the best balance.
We’ll see what happens with Fabinho though, if there’s even some interest in him or not enough (age, new contract, wages, stuck to one position really), maybe he stays here for now but starts playing less. It’s possible that one of the new midfield signing or two could potentially do the job at single pivot, or Hendo goes more into direct battle with Fabinho. We’ll see.
New names could appear still until the upcoming summer, Fabinho himself came out of nowhere, without any links.
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Wonder if Bissouma wants out at Spurs. Been a crap season for him, not allowed to cover ground the way he’s used to. Conte wants his CMs to hold their ground and it really doesn’t suit him.
He’d walk into our midfield at DM or RCM.
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Yeah, if there’s not much money in the pot, we’re going to have to take a few chances like this. Bissouma’s charges were dropped in the summer so that’s not hanging over his head anymore.
There are so many players in the league I’d take chances on right now - Bissouma, Neves, Nunes, anyone who plays for Brighton, Palinha, Kamara, Luiz, Adams etc. It’s worrying how many players there are out there that improves this midfield.
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It’s the past now and it’s easy to say it, but Guimaraes looks quality at Newcastle. He seems to be able to do a bit of everything. I think Brazil had to use him more at the WC. Not sticking with Paqueta all the time. There was too much room around Casemiro. I can’t pretend I saw much of him before Newcastle at Lyon, I didn’t. But he’s the proof that there are players out there. Lyon is the level of club we buy from almost all the time and around €40m is also our new “sweet spot” in terms of price range.
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It was said that we had been looking at him last year before his move to Newcastle. I wonder why we didnt go for him…perhaps it was because we spent it on Diaz?
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Guimaraes was one of those players whose underlying stats at Lyon were incredible, apparently. I remember him being touted by many at the time as a bit of a no-brainer.
I think Newcastle either do or will have made a commitment to pay him a ridiculous amount of money, maybe other sides were just priced out of it?
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