Can he be useful? How so? I did watch him with Evergrande including AFC final and nothing special about him. Zheng Zhi and Elkeson were better than him so he is not even the best on his own team.
[MENTION=6099]JamDav1982[/MENTION] & co never actually watched him play but they blindly defend this purchase. Paulinho has no place in Barcelona and his situation will likely be similar to Douglas but an expensive one 40m+25m salaries= 65m. And again, we will be stuck with him and will fail to offload him because of his high wages and age.
Putting aside the absurd fee, The Absurd wages, And The fact we could've for the same money gotten a player with similar profile to him in europe and not in the chinese league.
Now talking about him purely as a player, He may not be an all around great footballer, But he has specific attributes he's quite good at, And i'm basing this on me watching him numerous times for the national time, And the 'Super league', Didn't watch him when he was with tottenham.
He's quite good at ball recovery, And specially tacking, It's what he's good at, Yes it is the "Super League" after all, But still it's the thing he shines above the rest of him teammates, And whoscored through stats confirmed this yesterday:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Paulinho: Has won possession in the middle third more times than any other player in the last two Chinese Super League campaigns (233) <a href="https://t.co/6Vjz5XzsT6">pic.twitter.com/6Vjz5XzsT6</a></p>— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) <a href="https://twitter.com/WhoScored/status/896355604457017344">August 12, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Where he would he be useful?, In specific matches, Specially those away CL matches where it's important to tame down the opposition and thwart their offensive transition, The same way pep used to play seydou keita for the same purpose in away matches.
While our players are technically gifted and amazing, Physically they're wusses with the exception of mascherano, And it's just the truth. Let's be honest, That 4-0 against PSG is just a good illustration that they don't even understand the concept of a tackle or a technical foul to stop an attack, It was a 90 minutes disaster of our players just watching PSG players run and bounce the ball between each other, And not even bothering to slide their legs a bit, That terrible first half against juventus is another examples of that, Ball watching for 45 minutes and letting the likes of paulo dybala shoot without any resistance.
So he'll be useful in matches requiring great ball recovery and more "dirty" play, Usually outside of our stadium.
The usefulness he'll provide, Is at the very, Very most, Worth no more than 15m, But he's not the terrible people make him out to be, It's the deal itself that is terrible.
