Scored 113 career goals in 421 appearances, and won 47 England caps with 8 goals.
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Scored 113 career goals in 421 appearances, and won 47 England caps with 8 goals.
And made 0 starts this season, and only about 4 last season.
What's Nathan Ake? 20 million is piss these days.
40 million for a crocked striker who has barely scored apart from like 2 seasons. LOL. #ENGLISH
He scored 19 last season.
edit: Cheers SvN.
I'd say £20 million is quite cheap for him in this market. Probably got away with it so Arsenal could dump his stupid wages.
Sky Sports are reporting that the Sanchez - Mkhitaryan deal would be a straight swap.
If that's true and it goes through then Arsenal are getting rogered.
Will Wenger have to stay on another year to integrate these new signings?
Considering the option is that or nothing at all, how are Arsenal getting screwed exactly?
What are we going to do with 30 million quid? Get Theo Walcott and Francis Coquelin back?
Also, has City walking away with the moral victory brought the transfer fee down? lol if so.
Didn't you buy the guy for 35 million?
£27million was the reported fee.
Arsenal in their current state adding Aubameyang, Mkhitaryan and some Brazilian winger twat with one name would be beyond parody.
Does the post-Messi footballer industry only churn out midgets and cut-inside forwards? Where are the centre backs, centre forwards and physical central midfielders that actually make teams successful?
He's scored at a very good rate since about 2014, but if you watch the Bundesliga you'll know that everyone plays with a stupid high line and makes the pitch absolutely massive, which plays perfectly to his quite limited strengths. If he gets 20 a season over here then fair play but I can't see it.
Mark Albrighton is the definition of an old school winger.
Wingers' jobs have been sub-contracted to full backs, who now need to be physical titans. Even then you get coaches (hi Antonio) who refuse to let their full backs / wing backs take people on the outside.
It's interesting because our Mourinho dominating team of 2004-6 had 6 players in the team purely to defend (Cech, back four, and Makelele) and the full backs stayed at home. Then we had Duff and Robben who were genuine wingers, Drogba a powerful centre forward, and Lampard a powerful attacking midfield player. That team utterly dominated the landscape and the closest thing to a luxury player in the whole squad was Joe Cole.
Nowadays it seems to have gone completely in the other direction and everyone on the pitch must attack.
Now that is true. I genuinely, not even trolling, think my corners when I played in under 15s were better than a lot you see in professional matches these days.
Was discussing this (kinda) a bit yesterday with someone: basically there aren't really any completely beastly Defenders around anymore, and the Defensive midfield beasts are also in extremely limited supply.
We agreed that Ramos is probably (arguably I know) the best CB in the world at the moment, which sort of says a fair bit. Players who used to be more prominent some years ago such as Chiellini or Tiago Silva just havent really had any successors.
If you look at the "Top 10 CBs in the world today" its all players like Hummels, Pique (lol) and Bonucci who aren't bad or anything, but thet are nothing on what John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic or even looking back a bit Nesta, Cannavaro et all all were.
You could say the same for DMs where perhaps Makelele was the greatest of them all but even now players like Keane, Gilberto Silva, Gattuso, or even (peak) Marscherano/Essien/Cambiasso would have walked into any team today that doesn't happen to have Kante, who is the only really class one there is right now (or am I missing someone?).
Eric Bailly is the best defender in the history of the world.
The depth in 'proper' central defenders around the turn of the century was amazing. Off the top of my head: Ayala, Hierro, Montero, Lucio, Ferdinand, Maldini, Desailly, Cannavaro, Costacurta, Samuel, Linke, Nesta, Stam, Campbell, Kuffour, Wörns and I've probably missed several more who would be top three in the world today. All these playing top European level football between, say, 1997 and 2003.
Was Worns ever good outside of Championship Manager?
Chivu (wasn't).
Chivu, Mexes and Bouma, the CM01/02 holy trinity of blowouts.
Stick Boumsong on that list too.
Chivu was good when he wasn't injured.
I think he's the first player I saw wearing one of those little padded Cech bonnets.
Cameron Borthwick-Jackson is back at United. DEPTH (he will probably never play for them again).
SSN are reporting that “Dortmund were also keen to sign Walcott, but the desire to play for Big Sam at Goodison proved decisive“
Big Sam and that :cool:
Following on from there clearly being two Paulinho’s, are there also two Timothy Fosu-Mensah’s? The one who plays for Belgium is a monster.
Wingers are undervalued. It's like coaches don't believe that staying wide on your 'true' side and crossing can work nowadays, but it does. Sane's doing it at Man City. There's Douglas Costa too.
Any time I've watched City Sane has come inside far more than he's beat a man on the outside and swung a cross in.
His role in the side isn't ideal either, he'd be playing completely differently if Mendy was fit and in the side.
I went to check to make sure I wasn't missing loads of games where he was hitting the byline like a curly bonced Damien Duff and WhoScored has him crossing on average less than once a game.
Douglas Costa is a good example though. Well done there.
I've also never seen Sane look anything like a winger. The last "traditional" winger in the league was Valencia really, until he became a fullback (and kind of proving Jimmys point).