Hell fucking no. That’s another bad contract waiting to happen.
Partey is the first name on the team sheet but if he can only play 16 games a season, how useful is that? I want to get rid of Xhaka so badly but even I would keep him around this summer because it doesn’t bode well that Partey keeps getting hurt and (understandably) takes time to get back up to speed after recovering.
Someone like Gallagher is so obviously a perfect fit and it’s annoying that he’s a Chelsea loanee so we’ve got absolutely zero chance of signing him. I’d look at Douglas Luiz, I like John “Super John” McGinn as well. I like Bissouma a lot and maybe after a bad season at Brighton (for the team, not him personally) he’d be inclined to move on. I’d even take Party Pooper Neves here.
I also wonder about someone a tier below like Tyler Adams at Leipzig who can play midfield or fullback. He’s probably reached his ceiling there and if we want to work on depth, having a guy who can play multiple positions is useful. He’s not a world class player but he’d provide decent competition.
But just imagine if we actually moved Xhaka on and signed two of those guys. There would be a parade.
It definitely was. I believe Juve wanted us to take him on a two year loan or two and a half year loan or something ridiculous like that. That’s bad squad building imo. He was a guy it looked like the club was willing to settle for temporarily, and yeah he’s played better for Juventus but I don’t know that he was going to really do great stuff for our future. And he’s got his own injury (and off field) issues to boot.
The two year thing not so much but I think I’d have taken a chance on him. We heard next to nothing good about Bentcaur before his move and he’s settled in fine. Not a worldie but doing a job. From what it’s looking like is we’ve spent about £25m on Lonkonga and Tavares and everyone in including our manager looks terrified to rely on them. So I’m not really sure how that’s helping our cause. And at the very least they are young with upside.
We know Xhaka is shit, you know Xhaka is shit. Id take a mystery loan all day every day over more reliance on him. We’re in this top 4 race not because of Xhakas entire campaign but Partey’s 16 games as you put it.
The simple answer as MM says is you just go out and but more players of Partey’s or Odegaard’s quality even if you have to spend up.
season is done. Thomas Partey is the best player in our team and so important to our system that without him - I simply can’t see us doing anymore than reverting back to the shitty early season form
July 2022 – Partey reports healthy to training camp
August 2022 – Partey injured in preseason friendly
September 2022 – Minor setback during recovery
October 2022 – Injured
November 2022 – Drops a 10/10 against City in a win before leaving for the World Cup
January 2023 – Returns from World Cup with a minor injury
February 2023 – Aggravates injury during recovery
March 2023 – Injured
April 2023 – Drops a 10/10 in the first leg of a EL knockout tie but has to be substituted
May 2023 – Injured
My worry with Mo is that because opposition players know everything he does is sideways or backwards that they’ll sit on Xhaka and let him have the ball.
If they know it’s going sideways or backwards you could have an opposition forward jumping a passing lane back to White (for example) and we’re fucked.
Sambi is a riskier move but I think he could at least offer a tiny bit of the passing range Partey has. It doesn’t give the opposition the ability to sit on a pass.
This expected news has ended our season, absolutely no fucking way we beat our spurs to a top 4 place. The question is, will it be Europa League or Europa Conference???
You’d hope we have enough of a lead on ManU (and they’re so done with Ragnick) that we’d finish ahead of them. If they have any sort of revival we’re finishing sixth. It’s so frustrating that this whole time the argument was, oh without Europe you can have a real crack at top four because you’re only playing once a week and now we’re probably looking at another year of Thursday-Sunday which is so shitty.
I’d say this has ruined my day but I did just get a job offer so it hasn’t been all bad.
