Winter Transfer rumors

I'd rather sell Kroos than Isco, and buy a great DM. I personally don't like Kroos-Modric as the attacking midfielders. Isco is at his best as a LCM, the advanced center midfielder. He's not an AM who plays behind the striker like Ozil or James. IMO he's a must in a 433

Adit wrote:Pogba instead of James doesn't really make any difference as long as BBC plays. He just like James is a superstar. A 120 mill player. Good luck getting him defend for bbc. He won't, and more problems of accommodating him. No thanks. I would rather put Kovacic there if BBC is here to stay.

I disagree with you. For one he is a natural midfielder with athletic abilities James can only dream of. He would do perfectly fine, way better than James in terms of balance and such.

Pogba covers a lot of ground as a player, he is a box to ox ad it's valuable.

Buy Pogba, another galactico

What's the issue here that we have galacticos or that we have players that dont fit how we play and are galacticos?

Mr Nick09 wrote:What's the issue here that we have galacticos or that we have players that dont fit how we play and are galacticos?

The problem isn't necessarily the current team, the players we have at the moment. It's an internal problem, Perez' mentality. He improved since his first stint but the core it's still there. As long as Perez continues with his philosophy we'll never have a real team. Morientes said a few years ago that after the UCL win in 00 everything changed in the dressing room. Players like him were feeling inferior. That's what's happening now

Perez will go and others will come and continue to sign big players just like barca do, just like other big clubs do.

Our problem is that we dont think about what we want to be as a team first, before signing. Our obliged 1st XI looks looks comical because these guys are not supposed to play together.

Other teams like Barca know that they play 433, so they sign players accordingly. They wont sign players that dont fit their scheme and they dont double up recruits on the same position like morons.

There is nothing wrong with galacticos, but when you have BBC and James, if you want them to be the stars, then go sign two box to box high volume mids to back them up, Not Modric and Kroos. If you want to play 433, then dont sign James because he is not a winger, and he is not an interior.

We should have never signed James in the first place, it's not like he is a game changer anyway, or is so good that the team cant do without him. Just for the sake of this argument, if we had Pogba as opposed to James in the squad right now, i would argue we would have less problems finding balance just like when Di Maria was our LCM.

James right now doesnt fit anything that we do when BBC are around, and if i have to use last season again as an example, he peaked with us playing right attacking midfielder in a 442. Everything else he has done is rather forgettable as far as i am concerned.

Mr Nick09 wrote:

Adit wrote:Pogba instead of James doesn't really make any difference as long as BBC plays. He just like James is a superstar. A 120 mill player. Good luck getting him defend for bbc. He won't, and more problems of accommodating him. No thanks. I would rather put Kovacic there if  BBC is here to stay.

I disagree with you. For one he is a natural midfielder with athletic abilities James can only dream of. He would do perfectly fine, way better than James in terms of balance and such.

Pogba covers a lot of ground as a player, he is a box to ox ad it's valuable.

Box to ox lmao


Btw I don't think so. He will provide the balance on the ball and probably a better defensive pressure but you are vastly under estimating the demand of that position.

If you played football you will know that covering for a teammate who never defends is the thing that makes you angry. At times you will get fed up and begin to shout at him. Pogba will come with a 120 mill price tag, a superstar. He will have hard time comprehending why he is running all the time defensively and not offensively. Let's not forget that Di Maria's main job was defending, not supporting attack or creating chances but defending. Running alot back and forth. He sacrificed his own game for that. That is something very difficult to expect from Pogba.. He is an ambitious kid who is probably looking at balondor podium not some one who wants to spend his 80% of the energy defending.

Tbh if all our players had Arbeloa's or Marcelo's mentality for example, we'd have won much more trophies in the last years. In fact there's more than half a team I wouldn't give a shit about if they left.

Adit wrote:

Mr Nick09 wrote:

Adit wrote:Pogba instead of James doesn't really make any difference as long as BBC plays. He just like James is a superstar. A 120 mill player. Good luck getting him defend for bbc. He won't, and more problems of accommodating him. No thanks. I would rather put Kovacic there if  BBC is here to stay.

I disagree with you. For one he is a natural midfielder with athletic abilities James can only dream of. He would do perfectly fine, way better than James in terms of balance and such.

Pogba covers a lot of ground as a player, he is a box to ox ad it's valuable.

Box to ox lmao


Btw I don't think so. He will provide the balance on the ball and probably a better defensive pressure but you are vastly understanding the demand of that position.

If you played football you will know that covering for a teammate who never defends is the thing that makes you angry. At times you will get fed up and begin to shout at him. Pogba will come with a 120 mill price tag, a superstar. He will have hard time comprehending why he is running all the time defensively and not offensively. Let's not forget that Di Maria's main job was defending, not supporting attack or creating chances but defending. Running alot back and forth. He sacrificed his own game for that. That is something very difficult to expect from Pogba.. He is an ambitious kid who is probably looking at balondor podium not some one who wants to spend his 80% of the energy defending.

I am sorry i did not know that being a footballer like you was the first requirement to have an opinion. Ill have a game next week and maybe illl reach your level... ffs dont be a clown Adit

You have your own theories about what Di Maria's job was and what Pogba's job is. Fine, i dont agree wth much of what you wrote but let's leave it at that.

The way i see it, Di Maria was the last player that we had at LCM who 1) was athletically able to play that role, 2) actually played the position with freedom to go up and down, knowing he would always fulfill his position's requirement in transition (specially defense).

My argument is simply to say, Pogba 1) has the physical ability of isco+james+their ancestors 2)actually plays the role on a weekly basis and does very well doing it.

I am not calling him a savior, or the only one that can play it, or the only one that can bring balance to the team. I made a simple argument that Pogba would make 5x more sense in this team than James. You agree, you disagree, it doesnt matter mr pro baller

As if footballers like watching a superstar walks and defend for v him... They hate it.

Your theory is entirely flawed. Because it assumes that physic and ability transforms to intentions. It doesn't. You can bring a much better defensive box to box theoretically and it still won't make much difference as long as the player don't decide to sacrifice his game.


Lol at Pogba playing that role actually at Juventus. Juventus defends with entire men. Their defensive effort and our defensive effort isn't even comparable and Pogba have shown squat that he can play catching 2 players at the same time. Like seriously... How is it even comparable to Di Maria defending that entire flank?03:14:52

Various interesting things have been said in this thread; it's indeed interesting just how messed up Perez's transfer decisions/team composition has been.

About Barca, not only do they have a deeply engrained playing philosophy that reflects on how they operate, they also have a quite significative nemesis to learn from and thus they are arguably less likely to stoop down to absolutely terrible transfer dynamics. Really, does a club out there run at that kind of distinct level as they do?

About Pogba, are we really going after him? Definitely food for thought.

As for next season, it'd be great if we could get rid of CR7 and give Zidane an opportunity to run a team without the guy's presence.

If your scenario did come true Sports, our backup midfield options would likely be Casemiro, Kovacic, Isco, looks good to me, only starting technical donkey would be Bale. I would think (hope) Zidane would know how to treat his creative players well and also feel the responsibility to step in and drive the club away from the bad places that im sure he is aware of.

Do you really think Benz will still be here once he is convicted?

'd never give Isco for Pogba. I want technical players, not athletic freaks anymore

Adit wrote:Futbol bill

Why did Socios vote for the change of revenue for president candidate?

Adit, I haven't a clue as to what you are talking about. Perez is a multi millionaire and certainly not dependent on any revenue from Real Madrid. As to socio votes!, I'm afraid you just don't know what a socio is. We get ONE vote, as to who is the president. There are 80,000 of us and like any election, somewhere between 50% to 75% actually cast that one vote. Think of it as a club membership. All decisions are made by president and board of directors.

The absolute last thing we need is a 70+ signing. Guys like Özil, Varane and AdM came to us for peanuts compared to what they gave us. Guys like James and Bale come with alot of expectations to score bucket loads of goals and be the front face of our team. It is hard to carry such pressure and do well at the same time. Again with our defenders, both Carvajal and Marcelo came for peanuts then we buy two 30 mill players to i dont know displace them and they fail pretty comically

There is no continuity in our team. Every year we have to buy a big name player even if that means the player playing in that position will be displaced for the flavour of the months who probably believes in his own bs hype

Pogba would be the same. Always playing close to goal to try and score because defending like ADM did wont give you exposure and wont be appreciated until you leave

What we need is to offload James and one of BBC then play a 442 with Isco and Kova on either wing so that we can actually get our passing game going instead of bypassing the brilliant passers we have in favour of hoofing

Dont misunderstand mr please i never said qe should sign Pogba, my argument was simply that the way our midfield is doesnt make sense. And someone like pogba instead of james, would make a lot more sense in our current team.

Now how the team should be built moving forward is an infinite debate because lots of smart people here are going to have smart arguments about how we should play. If we disagree it's because we like different things.

To me we are still missing that anchor in midfield, we gave Kroos a big contract and he is not likely to go anywhere and will be unchallenged unlessbsome coach just says fck it and brings in hisbown guy. Although good luck with that seeing how Benitez got linched tryong to install casemiro deep...

Oh and by the way, this valencia game was actually very interesting with regard to the argument i was making in this thread about leveraging someone like Pogba in midfield as opposed to a isco/james. Kovacic was playing the position, and he did very well all things considered, until the red...

When i see what Pogba does for juve, regardless of their team's result in that same spot, it's hard for me to imagine that he would help us more in these type of games than someone like james for example.

Valencia had Andre Gomes playing that spot for them and boy did he bully everything in his way. He is 3/3 ny the way, in terms of midfield dominance vs us since last season (with super Ancelotti coaching iirc). He has been consistently putting a clinic against our mid, he is just too big too strong too fast too good with the ball vs what we have in mid, namely Modric and Kroos. He shredded them today again and i wished he was in our team for about 90 minutes and some. it was embarrassing, We have nothing like him, this is what i am complaining about.

It's one thing to want our mid to look like prime barca with skillful dudes all over but 1) they had legends, 2) they had a system. we have 1) no legend, 2) no system.

If anything yesterday's match is further proof that who ever playing the LCM role is glorified wingback. Kovacic ran to death yesterday defending that wing and he barely got forward. He barely had any freedom to go up and he completed match with zero Key passes and clocked high kilometers ran despite getting sent off early. Don't think Pogba will be able to do that.

It's basically the same point we are making. THe only problem is that you guys keep focusing on the name as if the argument is about Pogba specifically. You can replace his name by Matuidi or Andre Gomes for example, given how he played yesterday.

It's getting lost in translation. My point was that our team issue is not so much galacticos but galacticos that do not fit. And we would be better served given our system with someone like Pogba as opposed to James. Pogba here as an example was interesting because he is 1) galactico, 2) plays the same position in his team, 3) relied on to be a midfield presence and to provide offense wide at times 4) can cover distances easily.

But Pogba is not my argument.

And you are right, i commented about it as well in the game thread, CR refusing to play as a winger and stopping Kovacic and Marcelo from moving further up was a disaster for our team performance in first half. I saw a slight adjustment as he was sticking wide in the first 15 minutes in second half and we created so much offense from the left. The game is played with 11, and one guy refusing to play his position according to the system we play, throw it all out of the window.

glad your seeing the light in what i said, about all the players needing to do their job, tbh i believe in the talent in this team and i feel couple changes are necessary, no more players like cr and ramos who just play to stand out than actually winning games.

if we were to keep things as simple as possible, sell one of isco or james, cr, ramos and arbeloa, new cb or 2, new lb and back up cf done.

You are fighting fights that are pointless, Ramos just secured his future in Madrid last summer, no way we proactively tell other clubs we want rid of him. Same with Ronaldo. So yes, they are playing poorly, no we cant decide to sell them

tbh its not a matter of playing poorly, its more of they don't give a damn, and both being key to defense and attack, hurts the team a lot both need to go, so lets see how it works out this season.

What do people think of Pato as Benzema's back up?

Of course he has a whole baggage to come with him too like partying and injuries but i am sure Zidane can straighten him up

He is cheap, could help when coming off the bench and would not mind sitting on the bench as a back up. Basically a cheaper chicarito who i thought was very good for us

We are linked with Rodriguez too but with his price its just going to be another Coentrao and Danilo situation. I'd rather go after Marcos Alonso or Gaya

before even looking in details at what pato has been doing in the past few years, his injury history etc..., i would just answer that Pato is not, and has never been a n9. Since we play 433 he can be valuable on the bench since he can play wide forward though...

ideal back is someone who can play across the defense and even with benzema. not sure...