Duncan also reported that Maguire wanted English as his partnership right? Can't trust this guy and in fact I never trust this guy when it's a news that has nothing to do with Mourinho but I also think this is possible move because I don't see the club to spend big on centre back anymore means no Kounde and other alternatives that cost above 50m this summer. If we are going to sign it will be as replacement of Bailly who is likely going to leave this summer due to his contract situation. Milenkovic is not injury prone so he has good potential to put serious challenge on Lindelof.
Nikola Milenkovic
- Thread starter Adnan
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Duncan also reported that Maguire wanted English as his partnership right? Can't trust this guy and in fact I never trust this guy when it's a news that has nothing to do with Mourinho but I also think this is possible move because I don't see the club to spend big on centre back anymore means no Kounde and other alternatives that cost above 50m this summer. If we are going to sign it will be as replacement of Bailly who is likely going to leave this summer due to his contract situation. Milenkovic is not injury prone so he has good potential to put serious challenge on Lindelof.
Make sense to buy Milenkovic and then another young prospect. Bailly and axel have too many fitness issues to be reliable.
The Maguire thing came from Ian McGarry, who's quite unreliable. The Milenkovic (and Bailly story connected to it) came directly from Duncan Castles. Despite being more reliable than McGarry, I wouldn't necessarily take his stories too seriously. At this time, none of the Italian media are reporting on Bailly to Inter.
Exactly, we will only sign one cb so i do worry about signing players just because they are decent and cheap. We already have two decent centre backs so i would be concerned if we sign another cb who doesnt have tje required qualities
Can you really take anything those pair of chancers say seriously?
Their podcast is so poor and padded out with speculation and personal opinion and facts that everyone already knows it’s the only way they can get 45 or so minutes out.
Utterly boring, you’ve got to be touched to buy into it.
Yeah, I wouldn't take the podcast seriously, but the recent bits from Castles came from his article for the Daily Record. He doesn't get wildly speculative with his articles like he does in the podcast.
I wonder why no has been upset by Bruno allegedly recommending a few Portuguese players? Why was it such a big issue? Was it just because it was Harry and he's not popular? The things people get their knickers in a twist about... Pretty sure none of our players are on the transfer committee so any such reports should be ignored.
That would be worth the punt at that price. Especially if we can off load bailly for similar or more.
I would classify Bailly as close to the Jones situation , in these times no club will be taking a punt on someone who is injury prone. If we do go for him I’d be looking to send Axel out on loan for a season just like Lingard to pump up his value a little and get rid.
If Fiorentina really just want 15m EUR, we should sign him on day one of transfer window
Whats he like defending crosses? It's something we tend to struggle with.
I know he's tall but its not always about that.
I know he's tall but its not always about that.
Better the Lindelof in the air, not as good as Harry. So would make us more resilient with people crossing the ball in.
At 6ft 4, the bare minimum I expect is being great in the air!
Compares very well with our current defenders:
| Aerial Duels Won per 90 minutes | Aerial Duel Win % |
Milenkovic | 3.82 | 78.5 |
Maguire | 4.40 | 77.6 |
Tuanzebe | 2.67 | 66.7 |
Lindelof | 2.38 | 65.9 |
Bailly | 2.39 | 60.7 |
Telles | 1.58 | 52.9 |
Wan Bissaka | 1.29 | 52.2 |
Shaw | 1.23 | 48.3 |
Shows how poor our defenders are in the air other than Maguire. But we still need a new defender to be quick.
Cheers. Not neccasrily high crosses, though. We tend to struggle with low ones in to the box, where attacking players get in front of our defenders.
Our best defender in these situations, in my opinion, is Bailly. Very rarely allows his man to get in front of him.
In Milenkovic, is he any good in those situations?
Two aerial monsters like Milenkovic and Maguire is something that would certainly help us.
Is he someone you could see going straight into our first XI?
I'm surprised Shaw is so low, he's normally quite good in the air for a fullback. I suspect that a higher percentage of his are when he's defending set pieces which is more difficult than open play, but I could easily be wrong.
Looks promising! How´s his pace? can´t be slower than Lindelof either. From what I remember he was physically strong if it was him I saw last time I YT scouted him
Also Serbian-English connection again
my thoughts exactly.He played RB for a while, so he's certainly not slow. I'd probably say he's about as fast as Lindelof, who isn't slow either.Looks promising! How´s his pace? can´t be slower than Lindelof either. From what I remember he was physically strong if it was him I saw last time I YT scouted him
He has never looked good when I have watched him.
Also Serbian-English connection again
Of course. If there's anything close to Rio and Vidic, then we're onto a winner.
If €15m is the price. Buy him. It’s practically a packet of crisps in this day and age.
Do a player plus cash swap with Bailly and Torres.
Defence sorted
Do a player plus cash swap with Bailly and Torres.
Defence sorted
I mean if your gonna splaff the best part of £300m on those two i wouldnt worry about spending a bit more on a CB
Wouldn’t we have three slow defenders then though?
Nah in fairness I’m not sure how slow Torres and Milenkovic are in real life, I do know they are slow as feck on Fifa though.
If this guy is half decent then, at the prices mentioned, this could be good business to add some depth in defence without blowing the budget.
Ideally after last summers activity we need to be adding at least 2 starting XI players to move us forward and I’m not sure centre back is the area we will look to do this. Therefore could be a good option.
The forward line is where we need to invest the big bucks IMO.
Ideally after last summers activity we need to be adding at least 2 starting XI players to move us forward and I’m not sure centre back is the area we will look to do this. Therefore could be a good option.
The forward line is where we need to invest the big bucks IMO.
Haha... my views have changed since I made this post. I'm not sure Milenkovic is good enough despite the low transfer fee. I think it'd be foolish to spend money on Haaland when we've got to fix 4 other positions in our first 11 itself given Pogba still remains.
Patson Daka - I think he'd come cheap and with every big club after Haaland, we should steal a march and get this guy in. I think somewhere in between 25 to 30m would be enough for this guy.
Ousmane Dembele - Yes, I'll get pelted for this but much of Dembele's issues have stemmed from not being able to keep himself fit and he's managed to do so this season. I think if we could get him for 35m, that would be a very smart buy. Although I would love Sancho, he's gonna cost a minimum of 80m.
Kounde - I think CB is one position where we shouldn't penny-pinch. We need the best CB to cover up Maguire's weaknesses. 50m in this market maybe doable.
Neuhaus - He's a deep-lying playmaker in the mold of Frankie De Jong. He's press resistant and would allow us to play from the back. With Kounde and Maguire in defense, I don't think we'd need a destroyer. I think Neuhaus provides that creativity that would stem from the back. I've not heard any rumors of any other team in for him yet. Maybe 25m would be enough to price him away from Mönchengladbach.
That would cost us 140m and we could generate probably around 50m in sales (Pereira, Lingard, Tahith Chong, Dalot) which would bring our net spend to 90m which wouldn't be bad.
He's good at defending the near post, but he tends to fall asleep on occasions when defending the far post. With that said, Lindelöf's better at sensing the danger and positioning himself for crosses, but his lack of height and strength hold him back.
He can play RB as well as a backup, for the fee I think he makes sense for the squad and replacing Bailly
I expect the two of them would score quite a few goals at the other end.
Milenkovic is not good enough, just because he's available doesn't mean we should sign him, is he an improvement on what we have? We have signed enough players who were available but weren't good enough, time to move away from that failed approach.
Did you see him against Portugal? Jota beat him in air twice and he's away smaller than him.
I think signing like Milenkovic means you don’t expect him going straight into first XI but more to upgrade our 3rd CB Bailly. However, unlike Bailly, Milenkovic is not injury prone so he is capable to gain trust from the manager to challenge Lindelof or the starting spot if he has the talent. And in term of experiences, he has played more professional football club games than Bailly despite of being 3 years younger.
Might as well have kept Smalling.
I don't see this top class CB to bring the best out of Maguire. I could still see us being ropey at the back with them two.
Definitely not height. Lindelof's height is similar to Rio, and only 1 inch shorter than Vidic.
Rio was taller than Vidic. I know google says otherwise but it's regularly wrong. Throughout their careers Rio was said to be 6'3" and Vidic 6'2", which is about right when you look at them together.
Of course that doesn't actually hurt your main point as it means Lindelof (if his noted height is correct) is about the same height as Vidic was. Vidic was just extremely good in the air while Lindelof is fairly average (not poor like many claim).
Lindelof as tall as Rio? Where did you dig that out from?