samthegooner I wholeheartedly disagree. We have more than enough room to buy in the forward line again. It's a numbers game, and 100% of the players you don't sign never come good for you.
el Janny Tranny
Coombs we have room for sure in terms of spots and playing time, but do we have the funds? If he costs £60m then I just am dubious that we spend what we need to on an actual left wing and CF. If funds weren’t an issue and if we knew we could potentially get off Jesus’s wages this summer, I’d be much more of a proponent of this move as an upgrade on Jesus/Trossard and then have us focus on a LW and CF in the summer. But I think the funds involved will negate one of those purchases and/or make us settle for a target that isn’t our top choice and that’s what makes me nervous.
samthegooner I mean financial room. If the Kroenke's are arbitrarily limiting spend in a way that doesn't align with our actual finances, we're pretty screwed anyway.
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Claudius what's probably most attractive to me is his dynamism. a re-occuring theme of the dark side of tetball is a lack of dynamism. at the very least cunha is all action, and will roam and naturally provide 3rd man linkup options via his busy-body style. if we get him he'll be a 'lift all boats' synergy boosting type geezer. and importantly he's in form and ready to go. I have niggling doubts about the longterm wisdom of this signing, for similar reasons Sam as alluded to, but I'm probably sitting at 60/40 for it at the moment.
Coombs I mean in an ideal world, I’d love to have Cunha plus a starter level winger (Gittens/Semenyo/Barcola/Nico) and CF (Isak/Sesko/Gyokeres).
If you told me tomorrow that we’d bring in Cunha, Semenyo, Sesko and Zubimendi by the start of next season (as a more realistic example IMO), I’d be quite pleased. So as long as signing him doesn’t jeopardize the others, I’m down.
It's not perfect, but it's a consequence of not spending in the summer when it was obvious that our forward line was short.
Man Utd looking to sell off their best young assets now…..
Am guessing there might be some other issues, have seen suggestions he’s been leaking stuff out and has a bit of an ego on him.
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TambourineMan 22/23 Jesus best ever season was league 14 goals. And that was 5 years ago playing for Man City. Cunha is currently on 10 with the rest of the season still to come and he's playing for Wolves. I think he's better than Jesus full stop.
samthegooner I still think the logic of “player X is better than signing no one” is completely ignoring the opportunity cost down the line if we then have more limited funds this summer.
We heard this all last summer and we ended up short and its going to cost us a title. We've actually been hearing it for a couple of years now and yet this better forward never appears. Its been 5 years and we haven't signed this world class forward you want us to hold out for. The forwards we've signed are Havertz, Jesus and Trossard. Cunha isn't some back up to these guys or some stap gap. He's genuinely an excellent player with the potential to step up even more in a better team. This is the sort of signing we need to make. He's in the sort of position Sadio Mane was before joining Liverpool. We aren't going to buy Vinicius Jr or Isak, we can't keep waiting around for someone who has already proven they are a 20 goal a season man because we aren't going to get those players.
I'm honestly surprised how many United fans are up in arms about selling Garnacho for the fees they've discussed, but admittedly I really don't rate him. 70m for him and I would drive him to Napoli/Chelsea if I were a United fan (gross). Personally, I'm hoping Chelsea go for him to take them out of the Gittens chase. Although I have yet to see any links to Gittens for us, which is unfortunate.
Qwiss It's a good point. I'm an optimist and while I'm not holding out for Isak, I would like to ensure we can still bring in a winger and striker this summer, along with Zubimendi. Hopefully, with what Swiss Ramble has shown to be our ample headroom with PSR, KSE will invest in kind because I think a combo of Cunha, a winger, striker and Zubimendi would be a great couple of windows before next season. Add in someone like Hato if we move on from Zinchenko and/or Tomiyasu and then we are close to ideal IMO.
samthegooner can Hato play CB? It's a bit of an urgent position to sign for when you look at the mess we find ourselves in if Gab or Saliba are out.
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Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert I believe he came up as a CB but I think he's been mostly playing LB this year. Honestly, I'm not sure how well he would cover as CB- would have to defer to someone who has seen him play more recently but I've loved what I've seen from him at LB this year.
If we keep Kiwior and ideally have White and Timber healthy, we should have decent cover at CB next year. I'm not even going to count on Tomiyasu since he's just hurt all the time. Also let's not forget that Calafiori plays CB too so between Kiwior, Calafiori, White and Timber we have a lot of cover at CB- its just that right now 2 of them are hurt and the other is our starting RB. We will never be able to adequately cover Saliba and Gabriel's quality since they are just too good of a partnership but if our injury luck improves just slightly next year, I think we should have the 4 defensive positions well covered by good, PL quality defenders.
Sicario2 - Tier 1 Just get it done. I am a Sesko believer. He definitely needs development and isn't a ready made article but his production this early in his career is elite, especially his conversion rate. We need more players that can just thunder the ball home at any moment and unlike someone like Haaland (clearly a better finisher and killer), he can actually play football and not look like a baby giraffe if he has to take more than 1-2 touches. There's risk of course but everyone has mentioned how we didn't take the chance with Isak when he came to Newcastle despite the concerns over his production and finishing - this is that chance we need to take.
I don't think signing him now would make a difference in the title race this year but not having to chase a CF this summer and moving forward would be such a breath of fresh air and allow us to address the remaining gaps in our attack. I still think he needs to be more aggressive and selfish - he needs to shoot more and also develop his body to be able to be stronger in the PL but he's 21 and I'm confident we can get him there.