Good deal. Home grown, cheap and actually a decent player.

let hopium season commence

For us now this is the best 3 months of the season.

goon wrote:

Good deal. Home grown, cheap and actually a decent player.

That's what I thought as well. Why is he out of favour at Southampton though?

Because smart teams generally dump older players unless they’re uber productive

Bertrand ffs. We're a joke.

If he's not on high wages it's fine. He's 31, maybe we want an academy player to slowly take over as backup for Tierney in a couple of years but nobody is ready yet?

If our first choice was old it would make sense to look for someone younger, but Tierney is 23. In a couple of years Bertrand will be gone (assuming we are not giving him a 4 year deal...), Tierney will be 25/26 and we can hopefully bring a promising young talent in.

Is he a like for like sort of player to KT?
IMO one of the reasons as to why Pepe was used as LWF was to provide the width in the final 3rd when KT was out and Soares was used at FB, as Soares is more inclined to underlap when used on the left.
It's about balancing the team and why the likes of Soares and Chambers were preferred over Bellerin on the right, with Saka as RWF coming inside. Bellerin works on the right with Willan as RWF.

One argument for this signing is you believe that he will be a bridge to Mazeed Ogungbo. Ogungbo recently played his final u18 game and will now focus on u23. He is hot property and will probably pass Lopez at u23 level. Both Lopez and Bola should be sold, I imagine. So you keep this ex Chelsea guy for 2 years until our kid is ready.

This is going to be another shit signing that will burden the squad for years. Just spend a few million on someone young instead who has more upside in the medium to long term.

Cedric was only a burden because we signed him, gave him a 4 year deal then started the season with 3 other right backs in the squad. His performances for a back up right back have been fine the few times he's played there.

It would be like if we signed Bertrand, kept Kolasinac and also converted Gabriel into a left back.

You’d think.
This is what I don’t understand. After clearing out half the squad in January and then having to dump Willian this summer, you’d think that our leadership would start to see some patterns and decide over-investing in veterans isn’t too bright. But we keep coming back for more pain.

Yeah, one or two is fine, you have to roll the dice and keep a world class guy like Auba if you can for instance, but the kind of veterans we're picking up are mostly never-has-beens or players who have already fallen out of favour on the level we're playing at (or aspire to play at).

I get that funds will be limited this summer after we messed up, but ambitious clubs sign competition for the starting players they have, not backup options that they then pray they never have to use. As a thumb of rule you want players who are on their way up, not their way down. We can't settle for this level of signings, that's as bad as accepting a manager who can't even qualify for Europe. Standards slipping all over the place.

It’s a disaster. There are so many problems with signing these old men. First, they are declining in quality. So over time, your squad quality gets worse. But it also means your asset base is depreciating and disappearing as they age and retire. So you leave yourself without people you can sell to improve your team. But you have another problem. When you negotiate a contract with Saka, you catch him as a kid and can potentially undercut his value when you give him a salary. So we are paying him £40k a week but he’s our best player already. With a 31 year old, however, you’ll end up paying a high figure based on what he delivered last season, but every year after that, his output will decline and you’ll be in the red.

It’s madness to sign so many of these guys

not against bertrand. cheap experienced back up is fine for left back when we have whack a mole problems in other areas of the team. just don't give him 3 years ffs