André Gomes

Adversus said:

Not really. Digne is too good to sit on the bench and after a couple of seasons seeing him lose his place in the French squad etc it was time for him to go. Frankly it was a mistake for his career to join Barca.

Now you could try and keep an unhappy player but when does that ever work?

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Selling Digne was the right decision for all sides. Not replacing him last summmer was wrong.

I also think we sold him for a fair price (somewhere close to his market value at the time; the same for Gomes this year) given he was just a backup who we got for cheap and he wanted to leave. Now how well he has developed playing regularly is mostly Everton's credit. He wouldn't have the same season if he would stay here in a backup role playing every 5th game (though it would still be better to have him than nobody last season as Alba's backup) and maybe not if he would be sold to another team where he wouldn't fit in as well as he did in Everton.

Our problem is that we are usually selling at fair prices while most of other clubs are selling at inflated prices (like they should on current market) and we are only buying at those prices. Big clubs will usually always overpay when buying from smaller clubs and on the other hand they will often sell under price when selling their reject to them. In "pre-Neymar era" Barça usually paid 150-200% more than players real value (and this was something normal for other big clubs as well) and sold our rejects for 50-70% of what we should. Now sometimes we need to pay 3-4 times more while we are still selling at pre-inflation prices.

Obviously we got really good value out of some of our signing over the last years like MATS, Umtiti or Raki and most recently eventhough he wasn't cheap we probably also spared 20-30M by securing FDJ in January. So it's not really everything as bad as most people think on the buying part of our transfers. But when it comes to selling we should learn to do much better if we want to "survive" and stay competitive.

Poor_Sunyol said:

Was he that unhappy? I don't remember him ever complaining? Ernesto would have rotated him a lot more in his second( or third, I can't recall) season.

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Not every player complains publicly. I don't believe he ever really complained privately as well because he was aware what his role was when he was signed and handled himself professionaly during his entire time here (like Jasper) so I have nothing but a respect for Digne and can only wish him all the best.

He admitted in an interview EV wanted to keep him but he convinced him to let him go. It's understandable he wanted to play more at his age (More rotations wouldn't help either because he wanted to be a starter) and knew this wasn't possible here. I also don't remember Barça ever keeping want-away players and I think this is the right approach. They are all professionals and would still do their job if kept but I think only players who are 120% commited and want to play for Barça should be here. And if you're unhappy with your role/whatever that's usually not possible so it's the best to part ways.

You're guessing though. For all we know he wanted to stay but we sold him for financial reasons.

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GOATmes

I'll be watching this baller on Friday night at Villa Park. Looking forward to it.

Abysmal against Villa

Lmao actually shambolic

I only watched a few minutes but still saw him take a shot and mishit a pass that both went straight out of play at least 30 yards off target.

He was injured in the first game and still looks to be suffering a little from it.

He has no movement ahead of him and no one coming for the ball. It wasn't his best game but there were mitigating factors.

We need to drop Sigurdsson and play a proper 433 maybe even with Gomes holding. I know he didn't do well there for Barca but we aren't Barca.

Adversus said:

He was injured in the first game and still looks to be suffering a little from it.

He has no movement ahead of him and no one coming for the ball. It wasn't his best game but there were mitigating factors.

We need to drop Sigurdsson and play a proper 433 maybe even with Gomes holding. I know he didn't do well there for Barca but we aren't Barca.

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He's not a CDM lol. Don't even try it

He's found his level at Everton. Good but not great EPL team is where he can be useful at.

I managed to catch the last 30 min of Everton's game (after our match I've been watching PL non stop, in 20 min it will be Pep's City) today and I must say I've never seen Andre play as well as he did for that half hour.


He looked like an absolute Rolls Royce of a midfielder out there. I know Everton have been in awful form, and so has Gomes, so it definitely caught me off guard.

EdmondDantes said:

I managed to catch the last 30 min of Everton's game (after our match I've been watching PL non stop, in 20 min it will be Pep's City) today and I must say I've never seen Andre play as well as he did for that half hour.


He looked like an absolute Rolls Royce of a midfielder out there. I know Everton have been in awful form, and so has Gomes, so it definitely caught me off guard.

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Actually Gomes was injured for the last few games which was part of our problem.

As for today. He started off the first 10 mins a bit shaky but improved throughout and absolutely dominated the rest of the game.

Horrendous injury against Spurs just now. Looked like a broken ankle.