N'Golo Kante

Kante is still a good player but hes old, injury prone and will be on high wages.

I don't want him no matter what the fee is.

We need players either in their prime, close to reaching their prime or up and coming players not players coming to end of their prime or past it.
 
KeanoMagicHat said:
Kanté is as good as Makelele, who played at a very good level up to his mid 30s for Chelsea in the Premier League. I think people sleep a bit on Kanté’s anticipation and game intelligence, he’s way more than just legs.
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Makelele played 30+ league games three seasons in a row for Chelsea and 29 in his fourth. All when he was above the age of 30.

For the last 3 seasons Kante has played 22, 30 and 26 league games. I don't think he has it in him to play that volume of games well into his 30s. The injuries are already starting to show now.
 
This would feel like a Woodward era signing and wouldn't fill me with confidence that anything has changed about our transfer approach. Players like Sangare and Alvarez could be picked up for fairly cheap but we want to go for the more marketable has-been yet again.
 
A signing that doesn't make sense since I thought what we are trying to do is rebuild. This signing only makes sense if he's the last piece of jigsaw to lead into PL title. If this is only for short term then better be only 2 years like we signed Ronaldo. We don't want this happens again where we struggle to move on from the ageing players.
 
We're not going be challenging for a title next season. The plan must be to get together a team for two or three years from now. Kante - who has been a great midfielder - isn't a player for 2025. If we sign him it will be a sure sign that we still aren't doing joined up thinking.
 
Harry190 said:
Limited on the ball? You are talking about someone who is still one of the top 10 midfielders in world football and you think he is limited. Compared to who? Who has done better in the last three years?
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He quite simply isn't as good as Fabinho or Rodri on the ball. Especially the latter. Even Matic who is leaving, is better than Kante on the ball. Fred is more ambitious in his passing. Kante keeps things very simple. In the last three years, I have preferred Rodri, Fabinho, Fernandinho, Casemiro etc.
 
2+1 year deal would be good

Question is, can he develop or change his game into being a DM from this stage on? Then I think he could be valuable into his mid 30s like Fernandinho was
 
Too late to sign him now. His injuries are starting to mount up. He's is/was a great player, but I think he's passed his prime now. This would end up being a poor signing. We should be looking for younger players.
 
As soon as we get a sniff that someone might be past their peak let’s go and blow half our budget on them.
 
Would be hilarious if we sign Kante just as Pogba left. Hahahaha

Although I'm not sure Kante can still carry him like he once did.
 
Oh how the mighty are falling! It's quite something when superhuman players look like mere mortals once what made them special starts to fade.

Unless he modifies his game, it doesn't look like he's got much left in him before his injury woes magnify and he becomes a true shadow of himself. Beggars can't be choosers, and all that, but this has Scweinsteiger/Matic/Sanchez vibes all over it and then a you're left with as a big name, big wages and an ineffective player.
 
No issue with Kante as a player, he is (or perhaps was) class.

But the bottom line is that the struggles to keep him fit mean he'll have to sit out a lot of games if we sign him. After all this time complaining about the lack of a defensive midfielder, is that what we really want? A DM who will require Fred/McTominay to keep playing a lot more than is ideal? Including in some of our biggest games next season?

And that's assuming his fitness problems don't get worse as he ages, or that the impact of them doesn't reduce how good he is in the times he does play. There's a reason Chelsea are fine with letting him go and it isn't because they've suddenly stopped appreciating the player he was.

One of the points Rangnick made regarding our failed transfer policy was that signing players like Cavani was short-sighted and a sticking plaster strategy that had no future. Signing Kante would be a direct continuation of that. I thought we were supposed to have learned our lesson?
 
A Kante that has dropped a level is still better than most midfielders in the prem, and definitely better than our current batch. For a low fee and someone that has experience of winning big trophies, and well adjusted to the PL, he’d be an excellent acquisition.

Just to add (for those saying he’s perma crocked): he’s still had 42 appearances this season. 4 less than Bruno.
 
Remember the geese said:
He quite simply isn't as good as Fabinho or Rodri on the ball. Especially the latter. Even Matic who is leaving, is better than Kante on the ball. Fred is more ambitious in his passing. Kante keeps things very simple. In the last three years, I have preferred Rodri, Fabinho, Fernandinho, Casemiro etc.
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Those can't do what Kante does. Players don't have to play only one way. That's why it's a team game. Everyone has a role.
 
Scriblerus said:
We're not going be challenging for a title next season. The plan must be to get together a team for two or three years from now. Kante - who has been a great midfielder - isn't a player for 2025. If we sign him it will be a sure sign that we still aren't doing joined up thinking.
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Yep it would be like signing Lewandowski this summer. We should be viewing Ten Hag’s appointment as a rebuild to challenging in his 3rd season.

We should be ideally targeting players around the 21-25 year old mark with potential so that come that 3rd season they are hitting their peak, which will enable us to have a steady period of challenging. Players like Sangare, Man Utd Kone (the latest to be linked) and of course De Jong are ideal.

Not against signing more ready-made players around the 27-28 mark but my issue with that is they’ll then be into their 30s in season 3, when we should be wanting to have consistency for many years to come like Liverpool / Man City.

How many first-team players have Liverpool or City signed over the age of 27 in the past 6 years?

Excluding 3rd choice keepers, Milner for Liverpool is one of the only I can think of.
 
Berbaclass said:
I doubt that to an extent. I remember the fees for Mata/Matic being fairly reasonable.
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Those two players were considered somewhat surplus to requirements and the fees offered by United was hard to refuse, especially £40m for Matic. Kante hasn't fallen down the pecking order in that way. He just needs to have his fitness and work load managed carefully.
 
Feels like a Woodward transfer if we are paying any more than £15m for a backup/stopgap. If we can get him for peanuts, great, if not, then new regime should use this as an opportunity to show they've learnt something their predecessors and pass.
 
Herman Toothrot said:
Feels like a Woodward transfer if we are paying any more than £15m for a backup/stopgap. If we can get him for peanuts, great, if not, then new regime should use this as an opportunity to show they've learnt something their predecessors and pass.
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the trouble with that reasoning is that you're not factoring the salary. Kante would want at least a 2 year contract on silly money. Honestly I don't see it worth it. Let's get someone like Sangare instead who'll be cheap (salary-fee), whose got a huge resale value and who has the potential to improve with us.
 
A great player doesn’t always equate to a great signing.
 
devilish said:
the trouble with that reasoning is that you're not factoring the salary. Kante would want at least a 2 year contract on silly money. Honestly I don't see it worth it. Let's get someone like Sangare instead who'll be cheap (salary-fee), whose got a huge resale value and who has the potential to improve with us.
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I agree and I don't think Chelsea would go as low as £15m. Much rather we uncover a player than welcome another once great talent to the AON Retirement Complex.
 
Many things about Kante would seem to make this a good bit of buisness. Everything you hear or read about him from the mini, to manners, work ethic and just his general down to Earth-ness seems like something our current crop of players could really do with.

Plus he is still a player but it would seem like a move the old regime would do. Buy a player nearing the end of their career, probably pay too much in wages, injuries and so on and it just seems like something we should avoid and go look for a younger version to help this team for the next 3-5 years as it develops.

I am kind of entrigued however to see some sort of scenario where Kante and Fred are on the pitch at the same time together. Just pressure the opposition to death like they’ve just escaped from the shire and snorted a line of coke.
 
Harry190 said:
Those can't do what Kante does. Players don't have to play only one way. That's why it's a team game. Everyone has a role.
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I just don't rate him as highly as others do. He's at his best when he is being a nuisance to the opposition in a box to box capacity. I would rather we targeted a younger and more technical footballer.
 
Chelsea must adore us. They squeeze all the juice out of players and then toss them to us and we pay for the privilege.

Christ, we are a fecking stupid club.
 
Caf told me Fred is better than kante whilst some argued it. Now when kante is older and injury prone and Fred is in his prime he is surely better than kante. Right ?
 
diarm said:
I was desperate for us to sign him when he was at Leicester - and was furious when we let Chelsea have a free run at him. But please not now - when he is 31 and the years of his style of play have taken their toll.

Go out and find a quality young defensive midfielder with a monster engine and take a chance on him. If we can't find any of those then it's time to sack the entire scouting department and start again.
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I watched him against Liverpool - and he ran exactly as much as he did 5 years ago. Ok - he isn't 100% fit all the time, but he did play 90 matches over the last 2 seasons, it's not like he is an invalid. Would gladly like to see us sign to play Liverpool and City
 
If it's cheap I think he could modify his game to play deep, seem him play deep for France loads and he's still very good at twisting his way out of tight spaces.
 
He’s been very good for both PL clubs and France but he is the most overrated footballer I have every seen.

I’ve actually never seen another player subject to media gushing on this level (aside from Messi) and they talk about him as one of the all time greats and some kind of freak of nature. There’s parts of his game that are pretty average.
 
I felt there was more to this rumor (assuming Whitwell is accurate).

I would love to have him as a stop gap option, would complement de jong extremely well.
 
I think he would be a good squad player, but i dont know if we would sign 3 midfielders this window?

FDJ
New DM
Kante

I would ship out McTominay and make this happen.
 
Complete waste of time and we need to stop being a feeder club for Chelsea's cast offs, would have thought we would have learned our lesson from how they underwhelmingly have turned out and are now both leaving for free.

Same will happen with kante, pay over the odds in transfer and wages for a player on a downward trajectory with injuries mounting up with each one just speeding up the process of him being a complete spent force and will have 0 re-sale value
 
Ideally, we should be looking for the next Kante, but our scouting is shite. But why wouldn't you take him for a cut price
 
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