Heavily linked to Torres again who the club clearly like.
I don't know what to think of Torres. Villareal and him are good at playing out the back, but Emory often plays low to mid blocks.
Can't trust a department that has failed to do its job in every aspect.
Well he plays for Spain too and doesn't look out of place. I think he is just genuinely a solid all round defender that's very good on the ball.
3-5-2 makes the most sense in the short term, because it limits the GK's responsibility in the build up and it gets more out of Ronaldo, who seems to prefer a CF partner.
Think this could work well
Pretty sure De Ligt was rated way higher, if Timber was rated that high we wouldn't have a chance of signing him.
I think Ronaldo prefers to have a big target man next to him for the two up front, rather than him having to be the scarecrow.
Que!? Why not. And yes, De Ligt was highly rated by pretty much everybody.
If he was rated as De Ligt, specially after captaining that Ajax side at 18, he'd had every major club after him. He would cost north of 70M, he wouldn't choose us in a million years.
Do you think a player that has a chance of joining other top clubs would currently choose us?
De Ligt ended up going to Juventus, hardly our superior.
Yes and no, we can still get good/great players, just not world-class ones. No world-class player is willing to go to a team that's on a "rebuild". They go to the very best to win top trophies and we can't offer that in our current state.
The problem is not Ajax, the problem is if other clubs come calling. Of course any player would choose ManUtd over Ajax, but would they choose us over Madrid, Bayern, PSG, City, Liverpool, etc?
There is no "etc". We've outspent City in bidding wars before, we offer more salary than Liverpool and Bayern and PSG is in the farmers league. Madrid are hampered by fair play. The grass isn't always greener. These clubs aren't for the same player at the exact same moment.
Indeed, funnily enough the only rather reliable source on Ajax hasn't reported anything on this transfer while for the Gravenberch transfer he has every little detail. Makes this all the funnier that Sky is claiming this while there is seemingly no movement at all.
Depends on how far back you want to go. Vertonghen, Vermaelen, Eriksen?
They can't really be expecting more than that for a defender really. They'll probably have someone coming off the conveyor belt anyway to replace him.
I mean considering how much we were fleeced for Maguire and AWB, its refreshing to see figures around that ballpark. With today's valuations, Timber would sit firmly in the 'value signing' category, even if he doesn't pull up trees next season. He'd cost the same as Lindelof and Bailly who were signed years ago, and who's ceilings you'd argue are lower than that of Timber's.
If you were to believe the rumours it really does seem like we’re going for another CB. I thought we’d go for two midfielders and one CB but it looks like it’ll be the other way around.
Ruud, Kuyt, Stam just of the rop of my head on top of some other players that have been brought up in this thread.
Realistically he would start as a RB ahead of the shite we have there pretty easily, and sporadically fill in at CB. In time maybe move inside as the CB, but we'd need to find a RB before we do that anyway.
Bargain.