Men's Soccer (Football) Thread Soccer • Page 576

Wesley Fofana ‘could be out for the season’ says Maresca | OneFootball

Wesley Fofana out for the season. What value for money he's been!

 

Unfortunate for Fofana. I like him a lot but he can’t stay on the field.

 

Wonder if this is the same bug Arsenal had this week. Apparently there weee some who played through it, which is mad.

 

Probably so. I’m guessing some will be forced to play through it tomorrow. I don’t know what other options there are haha sucks for the players

 

the Brighton athletic reporter had a column today talking about when Brighton end up selling Baleba and he’s been (imo) comfortably our best player. I don’t think we’ll get the $100+ mil for a midfielder again but I hope we can make it to Europe to hang on to him one more year.

 

*Spurs and Chelsea left the chat*

 

lol he’ll end up somewhere better than Spurs

 

That just leaves every other club in the league then.




I’m kidding. It’ll be Chelsea with a mad overpay.

 

Probably! Just messing about because of the Bissouma and Caicedo deals lol

 

Hey at least Bissouma only costs us like 25-30m. That’s a more accurate valuation than 100m Chelsea paid lol

 

The first half of this blurb from the Ange book is playing out almost exactly as this says haha hopefully the latter half starts to emerge soon…

 

Pretty sure Salah says in this interview this is his last year at Liverpool.

 

he’s been saying the same thing all autumn/winter, so it’s not necessarily a new sentiment or revelatory. and it is technically true as things stand right now but I feel pretty confident Salah and Virgil at minimum will get sorted

 

I don’t know how you let Salah walk. I know the ownership (in baseball, at least) are hesitant to pay aging stars big money but they cant just let him go without seriously trying

 

I don’t care if this is satire, I will pretend it isn’t

 

The problem with this, is that it’s much easier to do when your squad has players more valuable than entire opposition teams, and you are playing weekly against a midfield pairing of Robert Burns and the bloke from Trainspotting.

Like, sure he might turn it around, but his team experience in Scotland just doesn’t seem relevant to the PL imo.

 

Yeah, agreed. I don’t take it as meaning we’re going to suddenly start competing for the league title. We simply don’t have enough talent to compete at that level right now, and that’s fine. But it can “work” without winning the league like he did in Scotland.

I just wish people could apply context to the situation and manage expectations better. Like, even before all the injuries, the expectations should’ve been tamed. As sad as that sounds. But just look at our business recently. We are buying very young players. That isn’t a model for big immediate results. And in a vacuum, I think I’m fine with that. It’s ok to be patient and build for the future. It’s honestly the right move for us. You can still be competitive in the league and have a real chance in the cup competitions, much like we were toward the beginning of the season. But that strategy combined with the injury crisis we’re in the middle of, things can get really dicey.

It’s like the club does one thing right and then two things wrong. Buying teenagers who are potential stars? Good. Having no experienced squad depth in case of a few injuries? Bad. Not being able to sell off deadweight for 3-4 years? Bad.

Ange has his flaws, but I think he’s in a fairly impossible situation right now. It’s something we just have to ride out and hope we survive.

 

No clue if it’s reliable at all, but the “ITKs” are saying we only had 7 senior players training today and that Forster may not be able to play tomorrow lmao

 

this feels like when madrid didn’t sign de Gea on the last day of the window because one of the clubs had an error with the fax machine at the last minute

 

Yeah, this but is basically my thoughts on it. Like, they could fire him, but who’s going to come in and get results currently? It’s probably only the sixth (ish) best squad when fit. At the moment, the entire defence bar Porro is out so there is definitely mitigating circumstances.

I do think his lack of pragmatism is making it worse, but it’s a bad situation anyway.

Also…

 

If we decided to sit back I think we’d get battered even worse tbh

 

hard to know what he'll become

very pacy and still very young, seems to be having a good season with Middlesbrough

i'd probably not sell for now, at least at these offers but there's certainly a chance that this is peak value — whether it be future injuries, failures to develop, etc

 

Marmoush to City seems to be happening

 

Doesn't help that Newcastle are pretty much the leagues form team rn. Maybe the early kick-off will help you? On the basis of nothing, of course lol