Sorry to QUOTE myself, but I did some digging.
Barca played 60 games with 2 overtime played. 5460 minutes available.
PSG played 61 games, iirc no extr time played. 5520 minutes available. (They played CL playoffs).
Bayern 54, no extra time played. 4860 minutes available.
Liverpool 56 games, one extra time played. 5070 minutes available.
Personally, I don't expect same number of minutes to be available next year, but I hope I an wrong. But there is no way to get less minutes than PSG or Bayern. Super cup are 1 game, no 2 leg cup semifinals, 34 games league. That is 6 less games per season.
I am not sure BOTH Rashford and Nico are the answer, Nico alone should take over 2K minutes, closer to 2.5K even. Torres should also get more minutes, probably around 2.5M minutes too, mostly taken from Lewa. Those alone should being our starter minutes to regular numbers.
What we need is someone to take that Fati & Pau 600 minutes while being La liga level of player. Rashford is too much for that. I have high hopes for Virgili, or maybe Roony to be that guy.
I expect us to play similar minutes. We will be competing on all fronts, and if we are good, we should at least expect a UCL semi finals and most finals. LaLiga should be competitive aswell, seeing Real is reinforcing crazy. Similar can be said for ATM.
I don't mind us getting Virgili or Roony, but I feel like it will be a similar situation like Ansu and Victor. And if one of Raph or Yamal gets injured we are again in square one like last season.
Rooney is coming out of an ACL into a new league. I really don't expect him to be part of our team, and Virgili hasn't played a single game with us. I really don't like us relying on them this season, maybe 2026, but not this one. Now if they are able to easily take in the pressure and perform, I am happy to be wrong here. But I really don't think that will be the case in 2025.
Getting Perisic or Rashford (on LOAN) is because they are an option to us and are going to be cheap. There is no drawback, just upsides to this. It never hurts to have players on the bench.
According to my previous calculations, I think a player like Raphinha and Yamal should get about 3200-3500 minutes. Keeps them fresh and also match-ready. So that alone gives 2200+ minutes to Nico. So we have that sorted.
I don't think Flick will give too many more minutes to Ferran, keep in mind we had a thin front line and he was performing well, and he still got fewer minutes than most other teams' 4th forward players. Last part of the season showed us he is not good enough to play as the main striker for us, gets easily bullied by better CBs in top level teams.
Lewa should have a reduced role. It shouldn't even be a debate. Guy played 3900 minutes, it should not be more than 2500' this season. We can easily distribute that 1400' between Perisic/Rashford and Ferran. Add the 600'+ of Ansu & Victor and you can easily get about 1500' for Rashford/Perisic.
I think this is a reasonable assessment. It would give us cheap depth that can enable us to go deep in the UCL. Look at how effortless it was for PSG at the end, one of the reason is because they had fresh legs.
If we want to win UCL we need to have depth of OK quality, there's no ifs or buts. I am not asking for signing that are expensive. Heck, I am more ecstatic if we don't buy Nico, but get Rashford and Perisic for Loan/Free. Best decision. What I want is good enough players to replace both of Ansu and Victor.
