• The Houseboat

  • Monchi rumoured to be appointed Arsenal sporting director

Gazza M wrote:

looks likes this might happen on the cheap. a few italian sources are reporting he will terminate his contract with roma in the next week, citing the losses to porto and lazio being the spark for a clear-out at the top of the club

Di Francesco got sacked after the CL loss to Porto so there might be something in it.

Roma have some tough times ahead. They're feeling the strain of selling all their best players right now and they have to keep doing it for the foreseeable future. I can't really see guys like Manolas and Ünder staying beyond this summer.

How has Manolas been doing this season? He was really good a couple of seasons ago, have't really watched him since.

Monchis days in Rome are definitely numbered, he even got into an argument with some fans where allegedly (he denies it) he said he'd take them on 1v1 come summer 😆

Dimarzio suggesting that Monchi will terminate his contract today. Could he join us immediately?

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

How has Manolas been doing this season? He was really good a couple of seasons ago, have't really watched him since.

He always looks good to me whenever I see him. I think he's getting tired of watching them sell everyone maybe. Real Madrid were poking around in January and it wouldn't surprise me if they came back this summer, especially if the split between Ramos and Perez is true.

BWoolley wrote:

Dimarzio suggesting that Monchi will terminate his contract today. Could he join us immediately?

If they terminate his contract then yeah, if they put him on gardening leave then not so much. 

It doesn't really make much sense for Roma to keep him around if he's planning to leave in the summer anyway. There's just no way to execute his role without the conflict of interest coming into play. If they want to rebuild for next season then they need someone else to come in now. From our perspective, we're going to have a busy summer and we need him working towards that from now, whether it's in an official capacity or not.

Roma fans delighted with this. A quick look at the replies on twitter shows how many of their fans hate his signings.

Hopefully he will be back to his Sevilla form soon

On paper he went for the right profile of talent. Shick and kluivert had shown alot of promise prior to joining roma, but they just haven't panned out.

Yeah, we're not a rich club, but we have way more money than Roma. He should be able to choose higher up from the talent shelf. Even getting Kluivert and Shick to join them is good work.

Clrnc wrote:

Roma fans delighted with this. A quick look at the replies on twitter shows how many of their fans hate his signings.

Hopefully he will be back to his Sevilla form soon

I dont think his signings were that poor, some of them simply didn't work out a lot of that being down to EDF not properly utilising the squad. Couldn't name a single bigger transfer which was poor from the beginning bar Defrel who they overpaid for.

jones wrote:
Clrnc wrote:

Roma fans delighted with this. A quick look at the replies on twitter shows how many of their fans hate his signings.

Hopefully he will be back to his Sevilla form soon

I dont think his signings were that poor, some of them simply didn't work out a lot of that being down to EDF not properly utilising the squad. Couldn't name a single bigger transfer which was poor from the beginning bar Defrel who they overpaid for.

Yeh. The problem with Roma isn't the signings they've made. It's that they didn't add those players to what they already had. Monchi's job was to find younger, cheaper and more talented replacements for the guys who went out each transfer window. Consider for a moment that Roma have sold guys like Allison, Salah, Pjanic, Rüdiger, Nainggolan and Strootman just in the last 2 years. And those are just the ones off the top of my head. They've been selling players at the same rate as Monaco and most of the money didn't go back into the team; it went to service debt.

I think they've made a mistake in sacking Di Francesco, and Monchi leaving is going to be an even bigger blow for them, but it's typical of how they are doing things in Rome. They have a firesale every summer window and then their fans still think they're one of the biggest clubs in the world.

Whatever they say about Monchi, in Zaniolo, Under and Kluivert they’ll make a profit on the money they spent under him.

Hunter wrote:

Whatever they say about Monchi, in Zaniolo, Under and Kluivert they’ll make a profit on the money they spent under him.

Exactly, if Monchi did that alone for us, at least he would be reversing the trend of seemly losing money on every player we have 😆

Did they really just appoint Ranieri? 😆

jones wrote:
Clrnc wrote:

Roma fans delighted with this. A quick look at the replies on twitter shows how many of their fans hate his signings.

Hopefully he will be back to his Sevilla form soon

I dont think his signings were that poor, some of them simply didn't work out a lot of that being down to EDF not properly utilising the squad. Couldn't name a single bigger transfer which was poor from the beginning bar Defrel who they overpaid for.

I can see where the Roma fans are coming from. They were close to buying Mahrez and Malcom, but ended up with N'Zonzi and Pastore, who have been flops for them. 

The same could be said about Shick, who's not lived up to his promise (4 Serie A goals in 2 years) and he's going to cost them 40m+ euros. 

What was Monchi supposed to do about those two exactly? Mahrez wanted to come and even blamed Leicester publicly for continuously raising the fee they asked for, he eventually joined City for a price which Roma wont be able to pay for another 20 years. Malcom was a done deal by all accounts until Barcelona hijacked the deal last minute, what Technical Director has enough sway to parry an offer from a club like that?

Nzonzi has been rock solid for years, plenty wanted him here last summer. And Pastore seemed like a good idea too, always looked like a player who never fulfilled his potential at PSG and one with plenty of talent anyway. Same with Schick although he still has time to fix that, not going to happen though with him on the wing punting crosses to Dzeko. It doesn't seem like there's too much planning involved in the squad building but then again when you have to replace players literally every position you have to start buying in bulk.

I agree with you that Monchi probably did not have much to do with the Mahrez and Malcom situation, but I can see why Roma fans were happy to see Monchi leave.

It's always interesting look at the reaction of the deals when they happened and now. No one could forecast how valuable Zaniolo would become in that Nainggolan trade.

I don't know if he had any say in the fees for Salah for Allison; that was another contentious point that Roma fans raised about him.

They had a problem with the fee they got for Allison "The world's most expensive GK" Becker?

Complaining about the Alisson fee would be ridiculous. Pool paid a massive amount and that shouldn’t be clouded by the lunacy of Chelsea shelling out more for Kepa. The Salah fee was the problematic one. English teams were getting similar wingers at 15-20m pounds more, and very few predicted that he would explode as he did, even with his prior 12 month record in Serie A. That’s like Lorient fans saying “oh, we should’ve gotten £25m for Guendouzi because he’s a starter for Arsenal!”

Agree with Jones generally on Pastore, Nzonzi and where blame lies for Mahrez/Malcom. Let’s bring him in. I think our Spanish connection can do something.

But we also need to be patient. The team is a mess and this isn’t Football Manager.