Seems like this is starting to gain traction? Hopefully a good sign as him and Sandro would be immense upgrades
Toby Alderweireld
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Even if our squad is a bit old, it's not because of our CBs. We have plenty of young CBs.
Even our 'senior' CBs are what 27/28?that's youngish for most CBs.
We have two CBs under 23,two young CBs under 20 on loan and out of the senior CBs, one could leave this year.
OK so these are the ages of all our CBs :
Smalling - 28
Jones - 26
Rojo - 28
Lindelof - 23
Bailly - 23
Tuanzebe - 20
TFM - 20
That's an average age of 25.6 without including TFM & Tuanzebe. Including them it's 24 or something.
Selling Rojo and replacing hi with Toby doesn't make our squad senile!
And also I wouldn't call our squad old, out of all the starters only Matic and Sanchez are the ones you can say are oldish,that is provided we replace Valencia and Young, which I fully expect us to do.
Even if we buy Willian and Toby, that's just 4/11 who will need replacing in the next 4-5 years.
Once we have a settled first team capable of competing at all fronts, we can slowly buy talented youngsters / integrate our academy graduates into the squad with less pressure on them to perform.
Right now our aim is to win, reach back to where we belong and for that we need players who can deliver consistently. Also pushing youngsters into such a high pressure situation, demanding them to perform week in week out for a club of our ambitions is a bit too much to ask.
Right now our focus should be to build a team which can compete on all fronts. After we have done that we can tinker the squad and add a few youngsters.
Even our 'senior' CBs are what 27/28?that's youngish for most CBs.
We have two CBs under 23,two young CBs under 20 on loan and out of the senior CBs, one could leave this year.
OK so these are the ages of all our CBs :
Smalling - 28
Jones - 26
Rojo - 28
Lindelof - 23
Bailly - 23
Tuanzebe - 20
TFM - 20
That's an average age of 25.6 without including TFM & Tuanzebe. Including them it's 24 or something.
Selling Rojo and replacing hi with Toby doesn't make our squad senile!
And also I wouldn't call our squad old, out of all the starters only Matic and Sanchez are the ones you can say are oldish,that is provided we replace Valencia and Young, which I fully expect us to do.
Even if we buy Willian and Toby, that's just 4/11 who will need replacing in the next 4-5 years.
Once we have a settled first team capable of competing at all fronts, we can slowly buy talented youngsters / integrate our academy graduates into the squad with less pressure on them to perform.
Right now our aim is to win, reach back to where we belong and for that we need players who can deliver consistently. Also pushing youngsters into such a high pressure situation, demanding them to perform week in week out for a club of our ambitions is a bit too much to ask.
Right now our focus should be to build a team which can compete on all fronts. After we have done that we can tinker the squad and add a few youngsters.
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I don’t think you understand it correctly. I never said he is injury prone, I did not make any claims at all as there are no evidence to support any claims. But someone else claimed he is not injury prone. But you can’t really make that claim. Looking att his history before this season, yes maybe you could, but not now after a second hammy injury. In two years time we’ll know, but not now.
Although he's a much better player, let's hope he doesn't do a Vermaelen.
I said yesterday I was a little concerned by his injuries but if there is any chance of getting him, you make it happen! Him and Bailly and Matic just in front is the hardest spine I can remember in years. It's then about adding speed and quality in wide areas. Still have doubts of Levy selling to United, he would rather shift him abroad I'd say. It would be strengthening us massively. He would change how we play from the back and give us better leadership. These are the signings we need this summer, not Neymar and Galactico ones. These are the ones that will improve our overall team to compete, not another ego to accommodate and shoehorn in.
But youre mentioning players that every Utd fan would say are on their way out.
Lukaku
Martial
Lingard
Rashford
Bailly
Pogba
DDG
Scott
Will all be the crux of the side for the next 4/5 years. Add in the likes of Fred and SMS and you're looking at 8/9 players that are considered first choice being under 26 years old.
Hopefully we have a successful window but if our hardship over the next 4 years is to find replacements for a couple of players then it will have been worth it.
But will they go, that's the question, United fans say they're on the way out but hasn't that been said for some of them for years now, and of those, isn't Martial (wrongly imo) on his way out?
Just out of interest regarding defending not being an issue.
How would you of rated our defence without De Gea on goal?
For me, he is a massive contributing factor that we achieved 2nd, notbthe back 4.
He's weak in the air, but I expect he'd mostly be paired with Smalling if he joined, which should compensate for that. Alderweireld is great on the ball and likes playing out from the back, so he and Smalling's skillsets would probably compliment each other quite nicely.
TOby Alderweireld would be ana mazing buy for United. He is everything we want in our line-up right now.
- Intelligent Defender
- Strong in the air
- Tactically strong
- Good at one-on-ones
- Good on the ball
- Premier league proven
Eric Bailly and Toby would make for a fantastic back two. The likes of which we haven't had since Rio and Vida. I'm not saying they are comparable in skill. Comparable in their potential. I believe that Bailly can learn a lot from Alderweireld and we'll finally have that trusted combo : One guy who's slambang power and the other who's brains and finesse.
- Intelligent Defender
- Strong in the air
- Tactically strong
- Good at one-on-ones
- Good on the ball
- Premier league proven
Eric Bailly and Toby would make for a fantastic back two. The likes of which we haven't had since Rio and Vida. I'm not saying they are comparable in skill. Comparable in their potential. I believe that Bailly can learn a lot from Alderweireld and we'll finally have that trusted combo : One guy who's slambang power and the other who's brains and finesse.
Yeah. So you can't say any player that's have a hamstring issue is not injury prone according to your logic. It's silly.
Of course they will, they've either had a year extention for transfer value or haven't been offered contracts.
Even then I wouldn't be too unhappy if a few stayed. Having a few 29 year olds (feck sake) coming off the bench or playing a squad role keeps them fresh throughout a season.
If we can find buyers for Jones and Rojo and bring this guy in, it would instantly improve our defence. I do think it depends on our budget though, as other areas of the team need more work than cb imo.
A lot of smoke around this transfer over the past few days.
I'm not sure if that's just journalists jumping on the bandwagon, or if there is serious interest on our end.
I would love him here, but I just can't see it actually happening personally.
I'm not sure if that's just journalists jumping on the bandwagon, or if there is serious interest on our end.
I would love him here, but I just can't see it actually happening personally.
Yeah you're right numbers wise, we are quite deep at centre half whilst crying out for full backs, a mid and a right winger. The thing is if we bring in just one quality centre half, and I mean genuine quality, it would drastically improve the balance of our team. All our current central defenders are all prone to lapses in concentration and being rash, and all are prone to launching aimless long balls. I think a steadying influence back there sets us up. We can build from the back more, we seem to panic anytime the ball is in our backline hence the long balls. We could as you suggest recoup some money by offloading 2 or 3 of them.
Yes he has been great, especially at stopping shots, and a massive factor. But as he is part of the team it doesn’t change the fact that there has been plenty of of room to risk some goals conceded for some more offensive play from the back. Yet we did not see that.
Another factor is the inconsistency with new CB pairs every time. If you only play every second or third game, you don’t have the capital to risk anything.
You still don’t understand. It is not my logic. It is normal logic. There are no evidence to support the claim that he is not injury prone. How could you know that?
Why are people spreading fake news about Toby. He's not injury prone, Jones is someone whose injury prone, his injury record is not bad. See the link below x
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/toby-alderweireld/verletzungen/spieler/42710
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/toby-alderweireld/verletzungen/spieler/42710
I agree I don’t get where that comes from.
People usually get the benifit of the doubt, in your mind then every one is injury prone until they prove they aren’t? Ridiculous.
He's 29, which is basically 40. That's what happens whenever we are linked with someone around that age on the forum. There will always be people thinking of worst case scenarios where they tear their hamstring and we are stuck with an old player on big wages.
It's how you get statements like De Ligt being just as good as Alderweireld.
Our most experienced defender is Blind at the moment. Surely we could use one defender entering his 30's. It's nothing that bad and it can only bring some balance, especially when he's good on the ball and is defensively confident AF.
Yeah I agree, Toby could well play to 34-35 as he doesn’t reply on pace. He’s very fit and his injury record is good, I’m not happy about him wanting to go but club first every time. I’d say we will move for De Ligt when Toby is sold though.
No, I understand your logic, which is your logic, because you are the one using it. It's just monumentally stupid.
I'll explain. A player is injury prone, emphasis on the prone, if they're prone to sustaining injuries. It is a term that comes from a players history of sustaining injuries, and in some cases the same injury time and time again. Players who do not have a history of repeated injuries, are not injury prone, because there is no evidence to support that.
In 5 years, he could have sustained another 5 hamstring injuries in each year, therefore Alderweireld would be injury prone in the year 2023, sure. Today? in 2018? He's not injury prone because there is no evidence to suggest that he is.
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It's the Russians.
They want him to sign in a cut-price deal for oligarch Abramovich's Chelsea, who will then sell their promising youth academy CB prospects to Russian clubs, who will then make them easy targets for Russian ultras, who will then be emboldened to infiltrate Ukrainian clubs and mete out the same treatment to their CBs, and this will lead to ...
... well, I think you get the picture.
IIRC he had a substantial injury last season did he not? That coupled with what was a long term injury this year (which to outsiders probably feels even longer than it was due to Spurs' reluctance to play him) is why people would be concerned over his fitness. I'm concerned about it tbh, but he's good enough to take the risk imo
Looking at his history up until this season: no he is not injury prone. There is no extra risk that he will suffer from injuries the coming seasons.
Now he has recovered from his second hamstring injury and hamstring injuries could sometimes follow players throughout their career. Therefore, I can not understand how you could be so sure that this is a player where there is no extra risk of injuries.
How prone he is to become injuried again is of course depending of his injury record but we must also look into more recent events and possible gamechangers such as certain injury types with bad recovery records, severerity of injuries, players entering their 30s, etc.
Every player is world class until they are linked to our team. After that, they can go anywhere from injury prone to retirement age(28+) to luxury player. The rest of us should just learn to ignore this sudden upturn of negativity and stick to facts.
He played in 30 league games last season and 9 cup games. He had a knee injury meaning he missed 9 games, I wouldn’t in any shape or form call him injury prone, I still don’t think he will end up at United and if he does it will be a pretty big fee IMO.
That would make him the GOAT of CB, which he is not.
If he's the best man in our defence shows how vulnerable we've become back there. DDG is the sole reason why we are second in the league, if we had any other goalkeeper at least 10 more goals would've been conceded. I agree that Smalling at times has been quality, but him and Jones make way too many errors - which is why we have been poor back there at times.
Why is he a vastly superior defender? His defending hasnt stood out at Spurs and he isnt the leader there, Vertonghen is. Is it because he is good on the ball or because he doesnt play for us?
Based on what exactly?
The fullbacks made more errors this season. Smalling and Jones did well considering that and the poorer performances of our alternative CBs
De Gea did save us of course. But if was from bad positioning from our fullbacks and lack of tracking back from our midfielders.
He 100% stood up at Spurs and I'd argue Vertonghen improved as a defender playing beside him. He was a class act at Atletico and a class act at Southampton. I rate several players who play for us and don't rate a large number of those we are regularly linked with. I base my opinions on watching players play football - nothing else.
How do you know he's at the end of his peak?
Class at Athletico, no he wasn’t, he got 12 games there, was it all 12 he was class in? No Vertonghen is the better all round player of the 2. Having said that Toby is a very good defender.
Vertonghen was the same as always, really good workrate and good defending but can always make an individual mistake that sours his performance. Alderweirald doesn't make those mistakes as often and Vertonghen is very much used to playing with him since that was the partnership at Ajax, but once again it was Vertonghen leading the backline at Ajax the same as at Spurs.
Alderweirald stands out because he's comfortable on the ball. He isnt particularly amazing at anything defensively. Quite well rounded but other CBs are better at defending.
he might not be but most defenders peak is 27-31, my main point was that you've a core of players who are 28+ and may need to be replaced at roughly the same time as Sanchez and Matic, and you have quite a few in the squad who are similar ages, the same happened at City and we had 4 30+ full backs on our books at the same time and had to replace them in 1 window.
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