I was hoping for that transfer from the beginning and maybe because of that I did not want to look elsewhere, so when it is finally done and I am still seeing lots of comments that we overpaid, that we should buy other players i decided to give it a go and find other alternatives who supposed to be better signings than Antony so I went to fifa data base put left footed right winger, right forwards, right midfielders and this is what come up:
Messi 35, Salah 30, Di Maria 34, Mahrez 31, Sane 26, Mahrez 31, Ziyech 29, Sane 26, Asensio 26, Vela 33, Dembele 25, Berardi 28, Bale 33, Raphinha 25, Suso 28, Bailey 25, Berghuis 30, James 31, Januzaj 27, Politano 29, Pepe 27, Kulusevski 22, Thauvin 29, Saka 20, Sarabia 30, Tsygankov 24, Neres 25, Antony 22, Shaqiri 30, Ghezzal 30, Ikone 24, Mena 34, Lamela 30, Bowen 25, Castillejo 27, Under 25, Gil Pareja 29, Piatti 33, Townsend 31, Traore 26, Araujo 26, Stengs 23, Chukwueze 23, Madueke 20, Yarmolenko 32, Brooks 25, Lukebakio 24, Trincao 22, Tete 22
Then i put left side players who are left footed Oyarzabal 25, Kostic 29, Lemar 26, Diaby 23, Neto 22, Bongonda 26, Bryan Gil 21,
Seriously from all that players when we forget about Mahrez, Salah, Messi, Saka, Kulusevski etc there are only a few that we could consider like Raphinha, Antony, Bowen, Sane, Diaby, Neto, and that is it.
Raphinha only wanted Barca and Leeds would probably asked even more for him, so it could be difficult. If WHU want 150 for Rice, Bowen would be more then 100 I guess and i do not think he is as good as Antony. Sane use to be great for City but right now I am not sure if he gonna ones again be at that highest level. Diaby is playing really well, but again Bayer would probably ask for minimum 80 mil for him. Neto is playing well but I am not so sure if he has the potential to be one of the best, and once again if Wolves sold Gibbs White for 45 they would want 70-80 + for Neto.
All the others are either Too old, Not good enough, Way past it, still raw or Di Maria.
About Antony's stats when you watch one of the videos few pages back you can see how many chances he created only for his teammates to miss it.
That progressive passes and progressive carries is fantastic example what we paid for. He is 2nd in passing only behing Trent and 4th in carries behind Vinicius, Dembele and Mbappe. So we get 2 fantastic attributes that we were missing past few seasons to help us against teams parking the bus in one player. He is unique and i have not seen that kind of player for a long time.
If you make a list of all the attributes for great winger they would be Pace, Shooting, Crossing, Passing, Vision, Awareness, Dribbling, Technique, and even if you get all that most of the players would not be team players and they probably be very selfish.
I think that Antony would be in top 3-5 of every of that attributes as well as being team player.
As a bonus you could ask for hard work, stamina, tracking back and to be aggressive. He also is great at those. So if you put all that attributes there is no other player that can compete with him.