Quote Originally Posted by Bumble View Post
sounds like it... very promising. seems alot although i guess it will hit 50m if we do well and win things so its probably pretty safe it wont reach that. but we are spoilt for choice at CB and i assume this means we wont be using the guy who we bought but doesnt play for us that i cant remember his name at the moment.
Big money, but if you’re targeting the right profile of player then it becomes an investment and not an expense. These sums only start to annoy me when we start chucking them at players who are north of 26/27 because once their first contract comes to an end there’s no resale value there if we need to reinvest.

I do think this is an area that needs an upgrade, though, in spite of the number of CBs we have. We’ve been more solid over the last year or so, but a lot of the time I feel like it’s come at the expense of sitting too deep and leaving the midfield too stretched - one of the reasons we’ve struggled to link defence to attack, and often fail to maintain pressure on opponents in their half. At the moment none of our CBs are the complete package - they either lack the athleticism needed to cover distance or they lack passing ability and ball-control that’s necessary to contribute going forward.

Ironically, Saliba is probably the closest we have to the profile of defender that we want, but he has by far the least experience, and who TF knows what the state of his relationship with the club is like atm?