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BREAKING NEWS: Sky Sources - Manchester City are in advanced talks to sign Wilfried Bony from Swansea. More on #SSNHQ

Wow, that's as stupid as paying £30m for Michu would have been.

Isnt he off to AFCON?

Aguero, Dzeko, Jovetic and now the striker who scored the most PL goals in 2014. Damn.

Bony is shit, relatively speaking.

Not if he wants to play and develop. Maybe if he wants to earn money it's a good choice.

The Madrid deal is risky, but it has a lot of upside. If the stars align, he can be genuinely world class in a couple of years. The Ajax deal would be safer, but going there I feel like there's a big chance he'll be a Christian Eriksen level player. Nothing wrong with that of course, but they are obviously aiming for the skies and I respect that.

Weird that he is going to Madrid, I saw him live against my local team (Rosenborg) just a few months ago, and he didn't do anything.

Madrid deal is extremely risky. He has a lot of offers beyond Ajax as well. He can easily join a team in the Premier League or Bundesliga which can him a chance to develop and play. At Madrid one has to be at a high level to just play. They hardly sign players who need to develop and play them. Probably the last time it happened was a about 7-8 years back when they had Higuain, Gago and Marcelo. Isco who had a great season with Malaga and is being shunted around positions and being dropped to the subs bench. A lot of good that is doing him.

Pretty bad example, considering how phenomenal Isco has been this season.

The reason I think it's wise is not because of money. It's because he can develop there. Since when is it crucial for boys who have just turned 16 to play first team football? Nobody here is complaining or saying that Zelalem or Crowley needs to get out of Arsenal. Ødegaard is reportedly given a place in their squad, which means he will train with Ronaldo, Benzema, Modric, James, Kroos etc. everyday. At 16, I'd rather have him doing that than playing for Burnley or something.

And Rampage, his match against Rosenborg was his worst all season.

Anyway, the link I posted was from VG, Norway's biggest newspaper. DT (the local newspaper from where Ødegaard is from) is now basically saying that the VG article is a piece of crap. I definitely trust DT on everything Ødegaard related. This is just another one of his many club visits.

Not really. Training with those players doesn't mean a lot if you don't get match experience. No young players get chances at Madrid and very few develop and stay there for the long term. In the last 10-12 years they've let go of so many players and wasted years of development for players who'd have been better off playing rather than stuck at reserve level till they decided they are better off leaving. Look at Chelsea and their youngsters. Did training help the likes of Lukaku develop? Would Courtois be a a better playing for staying on the Chelsea bench? Nope had he stayed at Chelsea he'd still be behind him.

Isco isn't really shining as you are thinking. He comes in and out of the team and isn't played regularly in one position. He would have been better off going to a club where he'd play regularly and in his favoured position. He's yet to manage to get the numbers he did for Malaga playing for a better team as well. In 1-2 year he'll probably be sold off without developing as much as he could have elsewhere.

Take a look at the world's best players and tell me how many of them featured regularly for the first team at 16 if that's so important.

The point Quincy is that he'll still be there when he's 17,18, etc and thats when he'd starting getting chances at a lot of clubs. Real don't have a good track record of bringing these players through.

You have to be pretty arrogant to think you'll make it at a club like Real when the club has and will continue to buy players in your position for ridiculous sums of money. I very much doubt Florentino Perez will say 'we can't sign flavour of the month x for 100m because it will kill whatshisface from Norway'. If he's going to make it there he'll need to develop rapidly.

qs! wrote:

The point Quincy is that he'll still be there when he's 17,18, etc and thats when he'd starting getting chances at a lot of clubs. Real don't have a good track record of bringing these players through.

In their starting eleven, four of them are either a youth product or have been there since they were 18.
And who's to say that Ødegaard still needs to be there when he's 18? If he's not getting minutes by then, Real Madrid either loan them out or sell them with back clauses like they did with Morata and Carvajal. They don't let their talents rot on the bench.

I think Real is a good choice personally. He gets the chance to train with world class players, he'll probably play for Castilla a fair bit but he'll get a few first team appearances. His biggest threat is jesé imo, he's been at Madrid since he was 14 and may get more opportunities due to being older and being a product of their system.

Doesn't matter though, if he doesn't get chances he'll be able to leave when he's 21/22 at the end of his contract, still loads of time to develop.

We should sign Jese.

Victor Valdes is apparently very close to joining Manchester United.

He has signed for them. From first choice at Barcelona to bench warmer for the rest of his career.

Unless De Gea is leaving in next 6 months, his career has taken a tragic turn.