14 Jan 2020 17:31:18
I believe that our scouting system and our decision-making need seriously revamped. We identify players from other clubs at a young age when we could pick them up for a modest fee but then we wait until they are big players before taking an interest in them again. I recall us being interested in Dembele at Fulham and he went to Celtic for £500,000. Van Dijk also whom we could have bought for 10m from Celtic had we had the strength of our convictions. The same with David Silva, Aguero, Eriksen at Ajax. The list goes on. Now we have opportunities to buy Edouard for a comparatively modest fee yet we sit on it.
14 Jan 2020 17:43:25
I agree, we seem to miss out on the talented youth across Europe. This could be down to the toxics wanting instant success. Before Daniel James we have to back a good few years to have picked up a relatively unknown player at a bargain fee.
14 Jan 2020 19:13:54
You can’t buy everyone.
14 Jan 2020 21:52:48
What about Henderson from Sunderland who is now a CL winning captain or De Bruyne before he went to Wolfsburg. It’s all hindsight though.
Chelsea have the scattergun approach to picking up youngsters and ‘hoping’ they come good and I think it wrecks careers.
They reality is, players progress into world class players and we have to pay the going rate. Our scouts won’t spot everyone.
On that subject, Marcia in Spain have done an article on Solskji’s Babes, it’s a nice little spin on our current position.
15 Jan 2020 02:53:13
There are a tonne more players like this, we liked with Maguire when he was at Hull etc but people always come back with the "they aren't a united player" always gets me everytime.