Kalidou Koulibaly | Signs new contract.

Status
Not open for further replies.
el3mel said:
Koulibali is a long term plan. Still only 27 years and top 5 best defenders in the world. Will give us minimum 7 years as defenders last longer than other positions.

But why do we do this, we're treating the club's money as ours after all. Let's not buy him, let's go and buy some young prospects and save the money for Glazers' pocket instead. They need it more than the team.
Click to expand...
That is highly unlikely. More so when he relies more on his athleticism, his decline is likely to be sharper than more positional astute defenders. With Koulibaly, we would be lucky to get 5 good years out of him.

The oldest CB around that could possibly still be in a rotation for a top club in the premier league are Chielini and Silva, and even they might by exposed given the faster pace in PL.

It is better to get younger (<25yrs) talented defenders who would offer 7-10yrs and bring in a cheaper older player to mentor and help with their development.

With the current state of our squad, heavy investments should be in the attack where talent is more important than experience. We need to bring in 3-5 young quality players in midfield and attack, and those wont be cheap.
 
BrianMcClair'sBarnet said:
Think we would be another top class CB short.

Ideally:

Koulibaly
New CB
Smalling
Lindelof

Tuanzebe would likely go out on loan again,hopefully to a PL club if he doesn't come up with Villa.

Ditch Jones because he's rarely consistently fit.
Ditch Rojo because he's just mindless trash.
Undecided on Baily.
Click to expand...
My preference: Toby, Bailly, Lindelof, Smalling, Milenkovic

Toby+Milenkonvic would likely be cheaper and last longer than Koulibaly.

Then add RB+LB+DM. Probably need to spend about 200m over two windows on defensive players going by current prices.

Heavier investments (300m+) would be need in midfield and attack, where a top quality young player would likely cost 100m+ in the current crazy market.

Even with that, we would still need to discover some real gems in the rough and have a manager that is given time and can develop them.
 
el3mel said:
Let's not buy Koulibaly for 100m. Let's go and buy another hot doubtful prospect for 20-30m then spend the season slaughtering him and whoever buys him while watching our rivals splashing +70 on defenders.
Click to expand...
Our rivals are in a much stronger position to splash the cash than us. Liverpool got a lot of money from the sale of Coutinho and it was pretty evident they would be a very competitive team if they could get their defence sorted.

We're in a position where we need to strengthen multiple positions and if we start throwing £100m bids around for a CB then it would effect our plans for other positions.
 
The fact we're talking of 100 million bids for one single player :rolleyes:.
God,how ridiculous can football get.
Or how ridiculous can we get.
 
Last edited:
We were all complaining about not fully addressing our midfield issues until we got Pogba, and many kept banging on about how we needed to spend big on a striker - then we signed Lukaku. City and Liverpool spent big on CBs and it worked for them, but knowing how transfers works out for us and all that, Koulibaly would probably end up as another big money scapegoat like Pogba, like Lukaku.
 
I will be watching him closely against the scousers this tuesday.
Lets see if he can handle some pressure. Expect him to keep a clean sheet against them. Don't dissapoint me big man!
 
If anyone thinks we are going to splash 90m on a 27 year old defender needs to think through this again.
 
Can’t we chuck in Darmian to knock off like £10m?
 
MouChou said:
I will be watching him closely against the scousers this tuesday.
Lets see if he can handle some pressure. Expect him to keep a clean sheet against them. Don't dissapoint me big man!
Click to expand...
Ignore the spectacular, eye-pleasing part of his game and try to focus more on details.
 
BrianMcClair'sBarnet said:
The fact we're talking of 100 million bids for one single player :rolleyes:.
God,how ridiculous can football get.
Or how ridiculous can we get.
Click to expand...
We have to move with the times. Liverpool spent 75m on Van Dijk. City spent 70m on Laporte. Koulibaly is in that bracket. He is a tank of a defender.
 
Spending that money on one defender is idiotic. It's not going to make much difference when the midfield is mediocre, and attacking unit are not coached properly.
 
I assume he can hold his own in the PL with no transitioning period so the question should be, would he work out alongside Bailly or Lindelof? Or if they fail next season as well, which we have to account for, could he form a partnership with Smalling or even Tuanzebe? If he can, I don't care about the money. Any CB we buy who doesn't fill that simple criteria would be a bad buy, no matter the price. I would lean towards an experienced defender myself based on probabilities for fitting the criteria but it doesn't really matter as long as its a good fit.
 
MikeKing said:
I assume he can hold his own in the PL with no transitioning period so the question should be, would he work out alongside Bailly or Lindelof? Or if they fail next season as well, which we have to account for, could he form a partnership with Smalling or even Tuanzebe? If he can, I don't care about the money. Any CB we buy who doesn't fill that simple criteria would be a bad buy, no matter the price. I would lean towards an experienced defender myself based on probabilities for fitting the criteria but it doesn't really matter as long as its a good fit.
Click to expand...

Buying and 90 m defender just doesn't make sense, okay, even if he plugged in the goals, we wouldn't be a efficient attacking team instantly either under this manager with this midfield. Trying to knick a 1-0 win with a 90 m addition will be pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
 
Patrick08 said:
Spending that money on one defender is idiotic. It's not going to make much difference when the midfield is mediocre, and attacking unit are not coached properly.
Click to expand...
Look how getting Van Dijk transformed Liverpool completely. Don't go underestimating "balance".
If Kouliably belongs to the top 5 CB in the world as some stated, then he is worth the money. Even if Mourinho is gone by the end of the season, our next manager would also benefit from it. We missed out on Kante because we waited until Mourinho was appointed to chase him. We shouldn't repeat that mistake.
 
Patrick08 said:
Buying and 90 m defender just doesn't make sense, okay, even if he plugged in the goals, we wouldn't be a efficient attacking team instantly either under this manager with this midfield. Trying to knick a 1-0 win with a 90 m addition will be pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree completely with your post above mine. However, we still do need to replace Jones and Rojo at the least and getting just one great, reliable addition in that position, no matter the cost, will be very important. I don't think we are that far off with our CB's but we still rely on luck these days and struggle to form partnerships. 90m for a CB is too much, but in principle I don't care as long as he is the right one, I'm sure you agree. A right winger and a CB is first priority and both should be class no question. Lots of improvements we can make but we don't have enough good options for these positions. Fullbacks too when I think about it as well as striker. This gets hard:lol: Maybe you are right:lol:
 
If he's the right man for the job then go and get him. We all scoffed at the dippers when they went in on Van Dijk for 75m but look at them now. He'd have this half season to settle and I would expect more from him going into next season - we could even try and tie up Toby for the summer too. Offload 2 of the ones we already have, probably Jones and Rojo, maybe keep Tuanzebe or give him a PL loan.

I agree we do need additions elsewhere too. If we got Sancho in and fixed RW we would be fairly well stocked. If Pogba were to be moved on, which I see as 50/50 regardless of manager, I'd imagine we could generate 80-100m for him and then that money would (hopefully) be reinvested in the midfield.
 
tieunhilang said:
Look how getting Van Dijk transformed Liverpool completely. Don't go underestimating "balance".
If Kouliably belongs to the top 5 CB in the world as some stated, then he is worth the money. Even if Mourinho is gone by the end of the season, our next manager would also benefit from it. We missed out on Kante because we waited until Mourinho was appointed to chase him. We shouldn't repeat that mistake.
Click to expand...

The situations aren't comparable. Klopp had a decent attacking plan while going forward, had creativity and workrate to press and a ability to keep the ball and play cohesively for long periods but kept leaking goals when VVD stepped in.

Mourinho has no plan while attacking other than to counter-attack and use long ball football to lukaku and Fellaini as a target man. Can't keep the ball for more than 15 seconds, have immobile players in the midfield playing without any creativity and urgency, while side passing majority of the time. Our defense ain't as bad as portrayed by mourinho, its been exposed with the choice of his tactics and team selection and style of play, with players like Matic pogba and who offer little protection to the defenders and get over run easily, while full backs asked to stay inside and compact so they have no influence in stopping crosses proactively as well. How much impact 90m defender make here to us as a side who has never had any epl exp either? and what balance will he bring apart from some good defending when going forward team can't even keep the ball or control the midfield play?

Do we need an addition in cb's? Yes but 90 m? When our budget doesn't seem to extend a penny beyond 150 m. No. It's typical waste of resources. Instead we should use the money more efficiently in getting right wingers or midfeilders. Keep the money to get talents like erikson or de long and take advantage of toby's contractual situation to get that area fixed for cheap.
 
ravi2 said:
What's wrong with that question?
Click to expand...

Plenty. For a start, ManUtd are much bigger club and he will earn maybe double of what he is earning now. It's not as if he is going to win anything at Napoli with Juventus sweeping everything from past 4 years.
 
roonster09 said:
Plenty. For a start, ManUtd are much bigger club and he will earn maybe double of what he is earning now. It's not as if he is going to win anything at Napoli with Juventus sweeping everything from past 4 years.
Click to expand...

We might be a bigger club than Napoli but there are quite a few more attractive destinations for a defender of his caliber. Our style of play stinks and our management from the top down is a mess.

Apart from money I can't see why he'd want to come here at this point in time.
 
ravi2 said:
We might be a bigger club than Napoli but there are quite a few more attractive destinations for a defender of his caliber. Our style of play stinks and our management from the top down is a mess.

Apart from money I can't see why he'd want to come here at this point in time.
Click to expand...

It wasn't a question of why would Koulibaly sign for us instead of other club, it was why would he want to leave Napoli to sign for us.

You are underselling the club, Jose won't stay here forever and like I said by staying at Napoli he will end up winning nothing and making less money.

Money is a big factor for every player.
 
Hawks2008 said:
Because they are a better team than us. Sure we can offer more money and are the bigger club, but that might not be enough considering we are on track to miss champions league.
Click to expand...
We attracted the likes of AdM, Pogba, Zlatan without UCL. United are much more than their recent slump. He probably grew up watching United winning trophies and surely wont be saying no to one of the biggest club in the world
 
Last edited:
Hawks2008 said:
Because they are a better team than us. Sure we can offer more money and are the bigger club, but that might not be enough considering we are on track to miss champions league.
Click to expand...
This is the only important factor in the modern game.
 
roonster09 said:
It wasn't a question of why would Koulibaly sign for us instead of other club, it was why would he want to leave Napoli to sign for us.

You are underselling the club, Jose won't stay here forever and like I said by staying at Napoli he will end up winning nothing and making less money.

Money is a big factor for every player.
Click to expand...

Certain players look to be happier in Italy though. Footballing aside.
 
VP89 said:
Why not?
Click to expand...

Because Chelsea made many bids for him last season and they wouldn't if they didn't get some sort of indication from player and his agent. Just a gut feeling though.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.