3 - Alejandro Balde

Porque said:

He is young, but not that young any more. Even going to Second Division is an improvement. Compare to Yan Couto who had a challenging year in Segunda and then went to Portugal and is getting starting minutes.

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City is wealthier club that was able to afford give Couto a 5 years contract, paying him enough salary to convince him to sign suchong term contract.
Barca was/is broke and Balde signed 3 years deal, one of them already passed.
You sent him on loan one year, and if he doesn't impress his value getting flushed in the toilet just like Miranda.
I think we need to be quicker with our assessment as a club.
Personally if 5M+ offer comes in, I would sell.
Same for Abde, Jugtlar
Maybe we can afford a good fullback if we sold those folks.

Porque said:

But out of the line of Grimaldo, Cucurella and Miranda he is the one I like the most at this stage of the career. Even if he has had an average season.

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Still believe Cucurella is the biggest talent of them all, still baffled how easy and quick we let him go

khaled_a_d said:

City is wealthier club that was able to afford give Couto a 5 years contract, paying him enough salary to convince him to sign suchong term contract.
Barca was/is broke and Balde signed 3 years deal, one of them already passed.
You sent him on loan one year, and if he doesn't impress his value getting flushed in the toilet just like Miranda.
I think we need to be quicker with our assessment as a club.
Personally if 5M+ offer comes in, I would sell.
Same for Abde, Jugtlar

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Well we could present to him a proposal to renew and go on loan to gain experience, which wouldn't be outlandish as we done that twice with Miranda and also loaned/sold with buyback Cucurulla in a controlled environment.

So we don't really have the budget to do what City done with Couto (though we had a 5m transfer fee agreed which got leaked and City tripled our wage offer) in terms of signing a player and loaning them, but we surely can budget that with a homegrown player.

Jutgla- Agreed. Sell, or keep for half a season and sell Braithwaite. He is basically a Braithwaite level player with better finishing (though some of his B misses are... perplexing).

Abde- Agreed. Sell with buyback. Has potential to be solid in a few seasons time but needs alot of work on his instinct and anticipation. Not a project we can afford to develop anymore in house.

Still believe Cucurella is the biggest talent of them all, still baffled how easy and quick we let him go

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Yep, gave Emerson more of a chance . Sometimes this club is too quick to judge on technique when we also need fight, winning mentality and character (it is not as if Cucu is horrible on the ball). You wonder if in the current era if we would have had the patience with Puyol or deemed him to lack the technical resources.

Talking of Emerson, we did manage an astute deal there (if all figures are at the face value reported) and managed to secure an interesting project at another team, test them here and sell at a small profit. So there is a proof of concept there that we can do it with intelligent scouting and timing.

Looks on fire for B team today going by clips from game.

Ok on defense and clueless on offense.

Didn't look a whole lot improved from what he showed early last season.

The kid can do it for us, just give him one season of starting consistently.

Get him out on loan and regular minutes to see what level he is at.

Some of his actions were neat. He is good in tight spaces and doesn't get confused in defense. He's very reluctant to make attacking moves most of the time. Hopefully will change, when given more trust.

Agreed his play in the attacking 3rd leaves much to be desired, but that will improve in time.

He's raw as fuck, but has everything to succeed. I am really hopeful with this one.

Plus his style of play would be a brilliant fit for Ansu/Ferran.

Physical he has everything a modern FB needs, under no circumstances should be go back to 3rd division football

Signing a LB and sending him out on loan is the right move.

Then in a year or two assuming we hit on our LB signing we can toss Alba out and bring him back if he is doing well.

That's what I would do as well but Mendes should find the right club for him where he'll definitely play regularly. Maybe Benfica if they sell Grimaldo. Or an Eredivisie team. In La Liga Betis could be an option as there are rumours they could sell Alex Moreno. Not sure if he's ready to be a starter for a top 6-7 La Liga team though. Celta possibly as well if Galan will be sold. We could actually sign Galan and send Balde there on loan as part of the deal. Not saying he would be my first option but at least something we should consider.

Didn't watch Caio Henrique much and don't know if we're really interested but he would also be another player in that 24-27 years range that we're targetting this summer (Kessie, Christensen, Raphinha, Kounde will be 24 later this year as well).

But I'm affraid we'll bring Alonso and stick with him and Alba until 2024 and then be under immense pressure to find a new starting LB in 2024.

Or the club things balde will be an established LB by then, so we won't be in a crunch to sign a LB..

I think after this transfer window fans must realize we now have steady hands on the wheel.

In two years? Unlikely given Xavi's reportedly not been too impressed by him so far and anyone that have watched him knows that he need time. I mean he could be ready for the 1st team and challenge for a big role in two years, but he is pretty raw as a prospect even now and development is not linear. Either way it'd be better for his own development to go out on loan and play regularly and develop his skillset both defensively and offensively rather than warm the bench for Alba.

He's not close to being good enough to challenge him. You ideally want two players challenging for the same spot anyway so need a LB signing this summer regardless.