Morgan Schneiderlin | BBC: Morgan Schneiderlin is currently having a medical at Manchester United.

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Dr Baltar said:
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.
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Someone could easily counter argue this with the fact Barca dominate possession in every game. He looked poor with Barca and Spain when they both struggled to match their excellence of previous years.

Saying that I personally think he's a very good defender.
 
Revan said:
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.
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I was his biggest fan early on in the season - I remember getting in a couple of rows on here defending him. But his best football was played at left back and on more than one occasion, he was clearly overrun in the midfield. Cracking player who I have great time for, but we will not compete with anyone serious with him in the midfield.

Revan said:
Anyway, the debate is pointless considering that we have enough money to improve both positions.
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Agreed. Really want to see us get it done so they can bed in on tour though.
 
Revan said:
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.
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This doesn't work this way. Terry couldn't play for us, Barca and Bayern so comparing him to any of our defenders doesn't make sense. Even Jones and Rojo are better for us compared to Terry. He wouldn't improve us at all. It should be clear why.

Luiz and Marquinhos are not even comparable to him, especially Luiz who is a joke and it can be seen when he has to be the leader of the defense (we have seen that at WC), while it is different when he has some like Thiago next to him (imagine Luiz being the leader and having to cover a lot for his RB, something Smalling had to do a lot this season and it was Smallings first regular season after few years, he should become only better). Marquinos is still to young so I am not holding it against him, but he needs time.

When it comes to Pepe and Ramos, here was a post from a Real Madrid fan who wrote the same what I think about Ramos (and he mentioned Pepe to - what worries me a lot are set pieces as he just isn't really good at that, while we don't have a goalkeeper who really helps when it comes to that, so defenders would have to clear it out), but yes in the system we play he would probably be a very good signing for us (but I don't think he would be a good signing for SAF, if he kept the same system, something where Smalling fits better). Him and Smalling should be a very good partnership in this system, as bot of them are quick, very good in on on one situations even with lots of space around them, while Ramos could start our attacks and Smalling could deal with the more dangerous headers in opponents team. I still don't think Ramos is worth some huge money, or that he is really good when it comes to pure defending (I do remember what people thought of him not very long ago), but as I've said at the beginning of my post, we can't look at these things that way.

Godin, there is not much to say, of course, while Miranda left I think :D, Thigao also, I agree, even if I think that he looses a to many headers (but maybe I watched the wrong games), but overall of course great defender.

I haven't seen a lot from Juve and when I was watching I didn't really concentrate on their defenders, but hey, they are Italian, must be good :D.
 
Jacob said:
How has he been for France?
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Decent. But it's not the best way to judge him. Deschamps continues to select players that shouldn't be selected and the team as a whole seldom play to their potential. They have good games, but should be doing better. It's the same with the under 21s considering how much talent they've got in both teams.
 
Revan said:
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.
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Yeah agreed. I don't like Blind at left back much, he's too slow and seems oddly disorientated there. One of the more challenging things for me to understand on this forum how the consensus seems to be that he's just a back up left back, when from what I can see he's much better in midfield. If we only sign Morgan in MF if be perfectly fine with that. Not that we're in a position to turn down Bastien Schweinsteiger!
 
I think Sneijderlin will be done by the end of this week. There's nothing holding this transfer back except for the fee.
 
SATA said:
Apparently he is not in the Soton team to play the friendly game, make of what you will
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Maybe they're just preparing for a team without Schneiderlin. They know he's going to leave, it's just taking a long damn time.
 
Kill 'em all said:
I think Sneijderlin will be done by the end of this week. There's nothing holding this transfer back except for the fee.
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But that seems exactly what the hold up is. Southampton seem to want £30m - too much maybe? They've had Liverpool over time & again, and did the same with Luke Shaw last season.
 
STE586 said:
But that seems exactly what the hold up is. Southampton seem to want £30m - too much maybe? They've had Liverpool over time & again, and did the same with Luke Shaw last season.
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I think we will eventually got for it. paying 5m over the odds or going into next season with the same number 6 problem?
 
Dr Baltar said:
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.
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Rewatch the Spain v Holland match. If that's the best defender in the world I pity the rest of them.

He wasn't much better in the rest of their world cup games. As I said before you can't really look at a defender playing for Barca because they are hardly ever under pressure but some of his Spain performances though have been woeful.
 
Dr Baltar said:
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.
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It's not harder though, it's just different. Sometimes he'd find it piss-easy, yes, because when Chelsea dominate a game they still have loads of defensively-solid players there focussing on shielding the defence, particularly Matic.

But now imagine Pique having to endure round after round of Mourinho-style Champions League knock-out games. Sitting in his box with the rest of the team, fielding cross after cross, charging down and blocking shot after shot, with no requirement to try and keep possession and play it out and no-one really waiting for a pass when he does get the ball... he'd crumble under those conditions. Even now, Terry is twice the player under those conditions.

Also, regardless of style of play, you're talking about Pique as if he's still the same player he was 2009-11. He's much diminished since then.
 
SATA said:
Apparently he is not in the Soton team to play the friendly game, make of what you will
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It's a big squad, and he's not trained. Likely having sleepless nights in anticipation of a United move, and a huge salary increase.
 
Mali_Zeus said:
@Code-CX could you upload it in some other format or something?
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Sorry Mali, I just came home. Try this one:

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Direct link: http://media.giphy.com/media/xTiTncS2oVdDnJwCWI/giphy.gif
 
STE586 said:
But that seems exactly what the hold up is. Southampton seem to want £30m - too much maybe? They've had Liverpool over time & again, and did the same with Luke Shaw last season.
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£30m or thereabout was always the fee that we going to pay. A bit excessive? Probably but given our need for him and the fact that we are buying him from a PL team plus the fact that he is homegrown....all those factors culminate in a perfect set of circumstances for Southampton to take us to the cleaners. This should happen at fee around £27m - £29m.
 
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Seems like we gotta get high earners off wage bill firsts. Nani RVP first to go Anderson gone, falcao gone- I defo think we will bring 2 high earners in. Ramos is one but I still don't think he will come. Schneiderlin would be great fit in midfield but I'd love to see a Lewandowski mega bid he is the goalscorer we badly need.
 
MorgON.

Heard various stories that he did or did not travel today. Only thing confirmed was he was not in the squad this evening in Austria.
 
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