Had a quick view of some Arsenal forums and a lot of them seem to rate him as a £15-20m max player. 
Morgan Schneiderlin | BBC: Morgan Schneiderlin is currently having a medical at Manchester United.
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More important than a CB? No way in hell.
Carrick and Blind for one position is stronger than Smalling/Jones/Rojo/Evans for two positions.
When are they due back?
I never get the point of forcing a player who doesn't want to stay to travel with a team on tour.
I hope we intend to play Schneiderlin alongside Carrick with Herrera, in which case he'd be taking Fellaini's spot. Carrick's another year older and increasingly injury prone whilst the jury's still out on Blind. Obviously we need to strengthen both positions.
Their last pre-season game is on the 23rd of July in Holland.
That would be overkill IMO, and considering that we don't have any 25-30 goals per season striker, that lineup will lack goals.
I hope it is Herrera plus one of Carrick/Schneiderlin with all three of them only on difficult games (UCL away and Chelsea/City/Arsenal/Liverpool away).
I wasn't a big fan of Carrick-Fletcher duo in midfield, and Schneiderlin-Carrick would look quite similar to it.
Is that you Raheem?
In this day and age, where a player happens to be with his team in the world means absolutely nothing in a transfer.
Tour is part of pre-season. He is still an employee of their club. It's unlikely, but still possible he'll be playing with them at the start of the new season so it's entirely reasonable that he be expected to take part in pre-season.
I think it'll offer Herrera more chance to get forward and I fully believe he can reach double figures in the league. Memphis is very much a goal scorer but obviously we'll have to see how he adapts and hopefully if we get the best out of Di Maria we should enhance the chances we create.
I think with a Carrick, Schneiderlin, Herrera midfield we'll absolutely boss most midfield battles and the result will be a load of ammo for our front 3 with Herrera helping himself as well.
Not sure which Carrick-Fletcher duo you mean, when they played in a midfield 2 a few years ago?
Austria is hardly far, I dont think him leaving with The Sotons is anything to worry about really.
Considering Carrick's injury record recently, and age, his replacement was the most important thing for us IMO. We need a center back of course, but Smalling is very good and Jones/Rojo will only get better, and you always hold out the hope that they get over the injuries and if they do, they'll become top class players probably. We just need to replace Evans with someone like Otamendi or Ramos and we'll be fine though. Get rid of a shit crock, bring in a world class defender who stays fit.
I think it is more important as well.
We've been crying out for a midfield solution for years. Carrick, Blind, Herrera as our only centre midfield options, is weaker than Smalling, Jones, Rojo, McNair, Blackett, Evans as our only centre back options for me.
Don't get me wrong, we need to address both. But I would be more angry if we start the season without sorting the midfield.
Yep. I thought it was the start of zombie passing football.
Herrera haven't ever reached double figures. While obviously that doesn't mean that he can't do that, I would prefer a pure No.10 in that position (like Mata). My ideal lineup would be:
Schneiderlin Herrera
Di Maria Mata Depay
Rooney
while in more difficult games we can adjust to:
Schneiderlin Carrick
Di Maria Herrera Mata/Depay
Rooney
We don't need two defensive oriented midfielders in 80% of matches in the league.
What day do the Sotons come back from Austria anyway? ...
Fair enough I can see your logic, at least we can agree that his signing would give us a load of options to tailor our team for different circumstances. That alone makes him a massive signing for me since I don't want to see Rooney in CM and Herrera at CDM again.
I disagree that he is very good. He is good and our best CB, but far from very good (by very good I mean a CB who is good enough to play for Barca/Bayern/Madrid). In fact, pretty much every top club have 2 CB who are better than him, but for sure have one CB who is better than him and one comparable to him. Like
Madrid: Ramos, Pepe, Varane
Barca: Pique, Mascherano
Atletico: Godin, Gimenez, Miranda
Bayern: Boateng, Benatia, Dante
Juventus: Chiellini, Bonucci, Barzagli
PSG: Thiago, Luiz, Marquinhos
Chelsea: Terry, Cahill
City: Demichelis, Kompany
Arsenal: Koscielny, Mertesacker
Players in bold IMO are better than him, while players in italics are at around the same level. All of them are better than Jones/Rojo/Evans.
For that, I think that a top CB must be our absolute priority this summer.
Obviously, that doesn't mean that we should neglect signing a Carrick's replacement, and Schneiderlin is as good as we can get.
I don't rate Mascherano higher than Smalling. Even in terms of pure defending, I rate Smalling higher than Pique. I think Pique's ball playing skills cover up for a lot of goof ups he does.
Pique was - probably by a significant distance - the best CB in the world last season. And has had at least 3 world class seasons so far. I don't see how anyone can rate Smalling higher than Pique for anything.
Mascherano may be debated, but I think that he is an excellent CB, and has shown to be so for a long time.
I saw a fair bit of Barca last season. Their front three have been so lethal that their defense is not worried all the much. I have seen Pique make goof ups so many times that it is not even funny. Many of the times Mascherano bailed his ass out. Smalling was crucified on here for that red against City. Pique has done equally stupid things last season. Don't know why he is considered, by any distance, the best CB in the world last season. Terry seemed much better than him for starters.
Pique was a bit shit on 2012-2014 but last season he played his best football in his career. He was as important to the team as any player bar Messi.
How anyone can even compare Smalling & Pique at this point in time is beyond me.
Half a decent season after years of mediocrity (being generous) versus somebody that has literally won everything over the course of the last 7 seasons.
Half a decent season after years of mediocrity (being generous) versus somebody that has literally won everything over the course of the last 7 seasons.
He was better than the shit he showed a couple of seasons back but personally I don't think he was as good as people make him out to be. I could be a defender in that Barca team and they would have still won the treble. He has a lot of mistakes in him even at this stage of his career. I don't rate him as highly as some on here do.
Are we watching the Southampton game at 5pm?
Without getting into the core of your conversation, I feel Piqué's season, while very good, is being a tad overrated because of its contrast with his previous years. You could argue he was one of the best CBs around, but saying that he was the best by a significant distance is a bit silly. It's definitely not clearcut, and this despite there being a shortage of top CBs around.
Is this the new 'every manager can win treble with Barca'?
I agree. I think he was better than what he was a couple of seasons ago but Terry, for example, was better and more commanding than him last season as well.
Smalling has gone from a laughing stock to being ridiculously overrated on here now, is this an extended April fools joke that I missed the memo on? Seriously guys.
Who was as good as him? The closest you can get are Boateng and probably Ramos/Godin/Terry/Chiellini, but I think that Pique was better than them.
We can make a new thread for that to not derail this much further.
That was just a hyperbole and I thought you would understand it.
Silva was exceptional at times (really exceptional) also, but that's a lot of names you've listed. They weren't 'close', they were arguably as good/better than Piqué. I'm just saying Piqué wasn't head and shoulders above any other defender in Europe.
Same criteria with midfielders. I agree with you that we need better defenders but disagree that it's more important than midfield. We have 3 players who can play in central midfield. One of them is 34 years old, one of them way shown up very badly there last season and one is fine (Herrera). City are the only major side above who are as weak as us in this area.
Off to YouTube to scout him again. Trying to get myself excited about him.
Is our interest official by any means?
Is our interest official by any means?
I don't think so.
This.
Barca don't rely on there defence anywhere near as much as we do. Pique is a good defender but no where near the best in the world.
I still remember the World Cup where he was one of the worst CB's in the competition.
Pique doesn't play in a normal back four like the defenders of Chelsea or Atletico. People think it's easy playing in defence for Barca but it's not normal defending. Stick him in Chelsea's back four with Matic in front & he'll find it piss easy. Much harder to defend when both your full-backs are in the final third for most of the game.
How has he been for France?
We need to sort this one quickly. It would be great if we can land Morgan, Matteo and Memphis before our tour.
He was our best (after De Gea obviously) player in the first half of the season. Or so was the Caf consensus back then (there exists a thread about it). He was average on the second half of the season, but he wasn't shown very badly there.
Anyway, the debate is pointless considering that we have enough money to improve both positions.
Which Memphis are you speaking about?
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