Manuel Ugarte | Romano - he’s signed | Awaiting Club announcement

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Palhinha with pace, and time on his side. What's not to love?

I don't expect him to come straight into the side since he hasn't had a minute of football since Copa America, but I could see him being a very good partner to both Casemiro and Mainoo depending on the game.
 
Why so certain and relentless in your negativity when you don't even know his game? :confused:
 
Will Ugarte be the missing piece of the puzzle that finally gets the ETH project clicking? if he isn't then I am not sure what the solution could be!
 
I hate to spill cold water on this but he is a midfielder with few goal involvements to his name. Four assists and no goals in 109 appearances over three years in Portugal and France. And we will in return lose McTominay's goals and assists.

My concerns would go if we were also seeking a creative midfielder. But we are not. Where are the goals coming from?

We managed just 57 goals last season.

Majority of McT’s goals have come late in the game when we’re lumping it forward trying to get an equaliser or the like. Hopefully we don’t require those kinds of goals as much if we can actually get a grip of midfield and put teams away when we’re on top.
 
I already had some doubts about whether he's the right fit for us and after the first couple of games I'm less hopeful. Will he be an improvement over Casemiro? Yes in once way (overall defensive ability) and no in another (passing). Will he be the signing to fix our issues in midfield, definitely not unless Mainoo drastically improves his passing.
 
I hope he makes the team for Sunday, as he would be useful vs liverpool. Glad we got this over the line. Lets hope he adapts quickly and makes us harder to play through.

No way, we'll ease him in over the next few months.
 
Knowing Ten Hag we won't see him in the team for 6 weeks. Usual rubbish he not ready needs few more training sessions. Rubbish

Get him in Sunday and get going.
That wouldn't be 'rubbish'. It's a valid issue.

He's had a stop-start summer. Playing for Uruguay in the Copa Amercia, then being out of the picture at PSG so lacking match fitness and sharpness at this stage.

I don't think we should throw him straight in as a starter in a huge game v Liverpool. Hopefully though he'll be available to come off the bench for half an hour or so. Then, after that, Uruguay have three matches during the international break, two of which are World Cup qualifiers and I'm sure he'll be involved in those, so he'll only arrive back from South America a few days before the league game after the break and so should probably only be a sub again.

Due to his late arrival, and then the international break, I'd say his first start should probably be the Crystal Palace match. We may well rush him straight into the team for either of the other two games, but I doubt he'd be at his freshest or sharpest.
 
That wouldn't be 'rubbish'. It's a valid issue.

He's had a stop-start summer. Playing for Uruguay in the Copa Amercia, then being out of the picture at PSG so lacking some match sharpness at this stage.

No way should we throw him straight in as a starter in a huge game v Liverpool. Hopefully though he'll be available to come off the bench for half an hour or so. Then, after that, Uruguay have three matches during the international break, two of which are World Cup qualifiers and I'm sure he'll be involved in those, so he'll only arrive back from South America a few days before the league game after the break and so should probably only be a sub again.

Due to his late arrival, and then the international break, I'd say his first start should probably be the Crystal Palace match.
Yeah that's pretty much what I think will happen. It's also why I'm trying not to look too much into our results and performances until late September/early October.

Everyone should technically be up and running by then, so if there isn't a wholesale improvement then I'll start to worry for the season.
 
Some much needed help for the midfield.

Will be very interesting to see how his arrival changes the setup.
 
With the way Mainoo and Casemiro run out of steam by the 60th minute, we're looking for two players who can come in to replace them at this point without weakening the team or hampering our creativity in middle of the pitch.

Casemiro/Ugarte seems like a good swap, either way around.
The massive question mark for me is who do we rotate in for Mainoo, assuming Mainoo is the starter.
It could potentially be Mount when we've got our strikers back fit.

Be a horrible double sub for the opposition to see coming on that. 2 players that are just gunna press you to death
 
Don’t know much about Ugarte
Don’t know much the point of Anthony
Don’t know much about the Dutch I took
And I don’t really get Ten Hag’s playbook
But I do know that I feel blue
And I know that if you feel blue too
We should probably go watch City

Is this some sort of a weird rant? I don't really have time to follow PSG games to have an in-depth analysis of what Ugarte is capable of. It's better to admit that than to feign knowledge that doesn't exist. Besides, my point is Casemiro is done and we can't trust him to play at a decent level week in and week out.

EDIT: Sorry, missed the context!
Yea, no, as you saw it’s just an early suggestion for the Ugarte song thread. :)

Thank you!
:lol: that's brilliant
And thank you too.
 
Could be the type of signing that helps keep him in a job in the long run, tbh. His subs continue to be an issue, but part of that is the massive dips that we have throughout the squad where our bench options just aren't good enough. But, suddenly, we have the option to rotate between Casemiro and Ugarte. That should help us to stop being overrun late within games, or should help us to protect any leads that we have.

Defence looks like it's steadily improving with the signings we've made. I'm less convinced by the forward line. I would love a really spicy forward.
I think Ugarte should start in big games and Casemiro should be rotation for him. I dont think we need Casemiro to come on for Ugarte on 60th minute or something, not most of the time

As for forward line, I think Garna and Amad are as spicy as forwards get, they just need to learn to also assist our strikers, and Hojlund and Zirkzee are extremely exciting young CFs, highly underappreciated

Our real problem is that, we only have these three. The droppff from them to Rashford and Antony is terrible. Not to mention that Rashford also doesn't see himself as a sub. Duh!

If we could have gotten rid of Rashford and Antony and replaced them with better wingers, even if much cheaper ones, but better suited to our system, that would be a huge upgrade, but I do think we have a lot of quality with Garna, Amad, Hojlund and now Zirkzee
 
Yeah that's pretty much what I think will happen. It's also why I'm trying not to look too much into our results and performances until late September/early October.

Everyone should technically be up and running by then, so if there isn't a wholesale improvement then I'll start to worry for the season.
Yeah, that's true.

With key signings only really arriving / being match fit after the season started - and the same applying to some of the players in the summer tournaments - then it feels like the season started a bit early for us and we'll have to wait a month or so to get a decent appreciaton of how the team is looking.
 
If we were going to buy one midfielder this summer, it needed to be a midfielder that was good on the ball and a volume passer. Ugarte would have been an excellent buy along with this type of player.

Don’t think buying Ugarte as the lone CM signing will help us much this season.
I hate to spill cold water on this but he is a midfielder with few goal involvements to his name. Four assists and no goals in 109 appearances over three years in Portugal and France. And we will in return lose McTominay's goals and assists.

My concerns would go if we were also seeking a creative midfielder. But we are not. Where are the goals coming from?

We managed just 57 goals last season.
This is a fair point, you might get attacked for it but it’s a legitimate concern. Many even want him at the expense of Casemiro, who also happens to be an important source of goals and creativity in this team.

I think Ugarte is a good player but the way our squad is set up, I think it will be difficult for him to seriously improve us this season. Hopefully next summer we are able to sign players to cover his weaker areas as I really do believe in the right system he has a lot to offer.
 
I do agree with the notion we need another midfielder along with this lad, which looks unlucky unfortunately. But he will make a difference and should help make us stronger in the middle where we are so piss weak.
 
Firstly, no we didn’t. They wanted €70m at the start of the summer and have agreed €50m + €10m.

Secondly, it looks like this has only been possible because we’ve managed to move McTominay on. We’ve been trying to sell McTominay and Sancho all summer and the likelihood is that we couldn’t do this deal until we had or we’d face some sort of fine down the line.
Spot on, it became obvious that signing Ugarte was dependant on selling Sancho or McTominay.

Signing him before that would have been a risk of not meeting PSR and hugely irresponsible by the club.
 
Eh? Ugarte is not the player we need if we built the team properly, but we need a ball winner so we need ugarte?

How's that work?
The best teams don’t play with specialist ball winners now. Not the ones who dominate possession - Arsenal, City, Real etc. They don’t need them as their tactical set up and quality of defenders negates the need for one.
Our tactical set up is shite and we have inadequate defenders so we actually need a specialist ball winner.
 
That wouldn't be 'rubbish'. It's a valid issue.

He's had a stop-start summer. Playing for Uruguay in the Copa Amercia, then being out of the picture at PSG so lacking match fitness and sharpness at this stage.

I don't think we should throw him straight in as a starter in a huge game v Liverpool. Hopefully though he'll be available to come off the bench for half an hour or so. Then, after that, Uruguay have three matches during the international break, two of which are World Cup qualifiers and I'm sure he'll be involved in those, so he'll only arrive back from South America a few days before the league game after the break and so should probably only be a sub again.

Due to his late arrival, and then the international break, I'd say his first start should probably be the Crystal Palace match. We may well rush him straight into the team for either of the other two games, but I doubt he'd be at his freshest or sharpest.
Agree with this. It’s also a point that out midfield has worked very well so far until around the 60th minute, controlling both Fulham and Brighton very well and providing a base for lots of chances vs Fulham and quite a few smaller opportunities against Brighton. The weaknesses were only showing when Case/Mainoo ran out of steam and Mount’s pressing was replaced by Zirkzee’s, who just isn’t so synchronised with the collective press yet.

I’d love to have Ugarte to put on after 60 min against Liverpool. Hopefully Zirkzee is learning our pressing patterns by the day now.
 
70M for Ugarte? So basically they would go ahead and use that 70M to buy Neves instead? No thanks.

70m! They want us to sponsor their transfers. Walk away.

I don't think the way we played last season is sustainable, regardless of personnel. Sure Ugarte can help break up some of the counter-attacks but he won't be able to stop us from conceding 20+ shots on goal on his own.


I did not - I avoided England games mostly as they were boring. But agree that we need a Rodri clone. I would be fine with Ugarte but definitely not at the 70m price range we're being quoted. I'd rather we take a punt on someone Seiwald at a much more reasonable price.

50M EUR tops. They're not getting anything close to 70.



Just having that destroyer profile in the squad is useful both in the short / long term even if we eventually get someone who can sit and dictate the game. So I'm fine with us hobbling along for another season with Ugarte - Mainoo at CM. Or even Ugarte - Mount. (I'm secretly still of the opinion that Mount is going to do fine in the Mainoo role but don't want to say it out too loud because all of the Caf decided to make him the poster boy for the previous regime's failures.)

If the ball progression can come from other players I don't know if such a player is strictly needed positional play or not. City got it done with Fernandinho, Liverpool with Fabinho etc. so I think we'll wait and see the results of the defence being re-worked, players being fit, Mainoo evolving even more and then find that playmaker if we really need one.

With the €70m PSG want, I can see why Zubimendi and Rabiot are being locked at, I think if they insist on that 70m well look elsewhere.

70 millions euros, feck off if that's true. Hopefully we can negotiate a better price.

€70m is laughable considering they want to get rid of him. A straight swap for Sancho would be a fair deal.

It will be stupid if the club accepts PSG unreasonable demand of €70m for Ugarte, anything above 50m in total is too much and not worth it

Just for context, if we take €60m as the proposed fee for Ugarte, this is the list of midfielders who cost +/- €10m of that.

Rodri - €70m
Szoboszlai - €70m
Tonali - €64m
Lavia - €62.10m
Matheus Nunes - €62m
Ndombele - €62m
Pjanic - €60m
Keita - €60m
Joao Neves - €59.92
Onana - €59.35
Fred - €59m
Jorginho - €57m
Ruben Neves - €55m
Palhinha - €51m
Douglas Luiz - €51.5m
Partey - €50m
Ugarte €50m right at the bottom of that list of fees.

The tweet you quoted is more than a month back. Any demands of 70M euros was posturing, nobody was gonna pay that since they got him for 60M euros themselves and now he was unwanted.

Latest reports have all claimed PSG basically want to recoup the 60M they paid for him.

I dont think its the worst compromise, but a how is it a good deal when the overall package is exactly what PSG wanted?
Seeing all the above quotes it doesn’t matter if it was a month ago or not it was their initial demand. You can see people’s views at that price.

Getting them to lower those demands is part of negotiating. It’s a bit unfair to cherry pick your beliefs on this and disregard the entire negotiation process from start to finish unless you genuinely believe Ugarte would have been sold for closer to €40m?

€50m + €10m (add ons we dont know full details of) is a very fair price especially given he’s 23, experienced and covers a gap in our squad that needs filling. Again in relation to the fees quoted in the above post it puts him right at the bottom.

Another way to look at this is would you rather have Scott McTominay and €20m or Ugarte in the squad? Which of those two benefits the team most?

I absolutely agree with anyone who says we also need a better passing midfielder too (as our best one is Eriksen and he can’t contribute significantly) but we clearly can’t afford to do that bit of business along with everything else and I suspect the signing of Ugarte is one to enable Mainoo to develop into our progressive CM and worry a bit less about defensive coverage.
 
The best teams don’t play with specialist ball winners now. Not the ones who dominate possession - Arsenal, City, Real etc. They don’t need them as their tactical set up and quality of defenders negates the need for one.
Our tactical set up is shite and we have inadequate defenders so we actually need a specialist ball winner.
What do you call Rice?
 
Wilcox delivering the goods. Excellent. Expensive, but I think it's on the limit of fees we're now willing to pay. For a young player with plenty of potential, I think it's a very good deal.

Glad we haven't let this go to deadline day. Still a few days in the window to concentrate on clearing the deadwood and hopefully bring another in.
You mean Dan Ashworth
 
Not my video he’s on about.

This is mine.



I watched the video again this morning and noticed it was made last year when he was still at Sporting. In the video, you mentioned a few areas where his game could improve, like progressive passing and crossing. Have you had a chance to see if he's made any progress in those areas while he was at PSG?
 
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