Kante and Pogba don't really play in a midfield two for France. Technically they line up that way, but realistically they always have another hard working central midfielder supposedly named on the wing but in reality he ends up playing more like a box-to-box midfielder. And that's against international teams, who are mostly weaker opposition than what we face in the league and the tempo is normally slower as well.
Yeah that’s a big part of the problem.
Combined with this though we also need Bruno to start showing for the ball more so the guys in the pivot or Shaw/Bissaka actually have an option to pass the ball to to progress play.
You are saying that on the base of Scott having one if not the best games of the season. More often it's a shit show, we need a CDM this summer, or otherwise you can write off next season on September the 1st.
sounds like a great CB prospect.
It could be argued that with Maguire and another confident ball playing CB like Varane we would have 2 deep lying creators from those positions and the DM would need only to shield and keep it simple in possession. A bit of a role reversal where you get 2 players capable of doing that rather then just the one mid.
Prime Keane or Vieira would be £150m plus in today’s money.
In todays market, no one would cost 150m plus as no club could afford that.
Yeah maybe that’s a tad inflated. But they wouldn’t be sold for any less than Kane, for example.
Top DM has never been as expensive as top forward, in whatever market.
Keane to us broke transfer record shortly after Shearer to Blackburn.
Well, that was 30 years ago, and in England for a while only. Comparatively the fee is still far off from other top FW or AM at other country.
He went for more than Alan Shearer for gawd sake.
And it still far less from other top FW/AM in the game at that time, why all the denial?
Go back as far as de Jong, since you mentioned him, peak Keane and peak Vieira were a lot better than him. You could not buy them for £90m now.
You could. De Jong cost 65 millions and fact is no onw is breaking the bank for players who don't help with bringing goals unless they are directly going to prevent conceding them e.g. a CB. As important a combative midfielder is they aren't enough to break the bank for.
I'm sorry, but is your argument here, Declan Rice is peak Keane or Vieira? Or am I misunderstanding
No, I think you got the wrong end of the stick! Rice is nowhere near those guys. (But I don’t think he is far off what Keane was when we signed him for a British record fee.)
Sorry, my mistake! Think I got your point now.
CMs are arguably as important as any position in the team. If you control the midfield you control the game. It’s often said games are won and lost in midfield.
Nah. Only one CM has ever cost near that amount and that's Pogba. Teams reserve their huge spends for match winners. The most expensive transfers have few CM in the top 10. You think top teams just stopped buying them? Control is overrated. Chelsea didn't control the game in the CL final. The most important positions will always be attack as that's how you score points. Buy hitting the net. Liverpool have meh CM but created one of the great recent teams. Real ain't been the same since Bale and mostly Ronaldo fell off but they got the same midfielders
We’ll see what he goes for soon enough.
Well lets just say, the the best player and most expensive player today are Mbappe and Haaland, and most top clubs would struggle to even spend 120m on them in this particular market. Why do you think top DM today would worth well over 90m? Not to mention Rice is not a top world class DM yet, far from it.
