Haiku

Gylfi showed he's not that good at big club being at Tottenham already. That price is huge risk and I think Swansea is the winning party of this deal.

We better try to sign Bas Dost.

Absolutely brilliant, what price would he command in today's market?

I don't know, probably of two Lukakus + add ons.

I would risk loosing him for free, but trying to convince him to stay. There are 12 months still, plenty of time to change his mind. The lad has a place in the team.

If Barkley is as good as we think, and he is on a short term contract. Why are the vultures not circling around? Why are there not a bunch of clubs interested in him?

Tottenham are waiting to sign him for £10-15m on the deadline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVIUEoP0fCs&t=1m55s

£50m for Gylfi is just about too much. I guess if he wanted to move we could get him for £30m. PL players cost too much, probably because of the huge TV revenue. Someone pointed Bernardo Silva's £40m transfer, which at that price is a bargain. He's better than Gylfi and comes from top club, which makes me nervous if we are to pay a lot more to Swansea for weaker and older player.

Good goals, but both will never get in against PL side.

With the amount of change going through our squad I honestly wouldn't mind if we leave our full-backs for 6-12 months. I don't want too much upheaval in the squad :/

I would rather gamble one season if it help us make strong push with gelled top side from next year on.

Back off. I don't like italian prima donnas.

Back off. I don't like his haircut.

We better have signed Valencia permanently than this guy.

If we are willing to spend £50m for Sigurdsson, why not add another £20m for Aubameyang? If he willing to go to China, why not us?

Is that a question really, or a joke? Being a fan doesn't mean you can't dream big, but you should have some reasonable sense of what is possible and what is not possible.

Aubameyang won't come here any time soon. The reasons:

1. BvB are still better side than us, until we prove otherwise, and are playing in CL.

2. China will offer him £300k weekly wages and bags of money from commercials.

I was a bit frustrated by the manager's behaviour with Niasse. Yes, he's shit, but it's our fault we signed him. It was a humiliation not giving him a locker and not allowing him to train with the seniors from the very first week of the pre-season last summer. It's like he has done something very bad to be treated like a garbage. It was a bit too much.

There's no guarantee that he even wants to leave Swansea.

He said in an interview earlier this summer, that he's happy at Swansea and not looking to leave. He has 3 years left and will only leave if the club decide to sell him.

6-8-5???

Yes, an unorthodox structure.

Gylfi the blond viking.

Sailing in the sea along swans.

The water so blue.

I agree to some extent, but Mighty Tony Pulis could easily make their side look toothless, which will be a great achievement, considering they have Suarez as a front runner. Оk we've gone too far into the "if" stratum here. I suggest we move back on topic.

Does nobody take issue with the last bit of this?

 

Surely Barcelona would slaughter in the Prem.

 

I know it's hypothetical, but you're talking about a team that has, top to bottom, among the best players in the world at every position.

 

Also, is that better for you Haf?

I was talking about their style of play. I do not dispute their starting eleven, which is truly the best in the world. Furthermore competition in Premier league is much stronger. Comparing teams outside top four in both leagues and the difference is huge in favor of Prem. They won't slaughter as they do in La Liga. Atletico is another story, they might become champions in England with a bit of luck, because their playing style is much more suitable. I guess Real could do much better than Barcelona too. What I'll be missing most about Barkley and Lukaku is their strength, which I think is vital in the final third. Barcelona lack these type of players, and their insanely high pressing style is vulnerable against quick counter attacks that almost every premier league team can employ. Barcelona's central defenders are very technical but a bit sloppy and not quite strong both physically and in the air. They could do well in Premier league, but not on a regular basis, and will probably lose a lot of points in games they naturally dominate.

We're not in the position to attract players of Bruyne's quality, as we are in transition, but hopefully we will in the near future. By the current market, if Sigurdsson cost £40m, Bruyne should be £100m although truth is he's unsellable right now. There aren't much options in front of us. We can't compete for the TOP prospects in the game like Tielemans, we can't also compete for the TOP proven players. We are a little behind and in the pool of realistic targets, there isn't much better than Gylfie in terms of proven quality. I would prefer someone younger though, but I won't be disappointed if we sign him either.

Also in terms of Barca's playing style. They won't survive in Premier league with it. Yeah they can compete with English clubs in two round clashes here and there, because they posses the best lineup in the world, but doing it every week is impossible to become champions in England. It's like Spanish and English football are from different planets and what works here, won't work there and vise versa.

Pretty sure I read somewhere that even though sigurdsson makes the most amount of crosses, his successful crosses percentage is amongst the worst.

Not really. His passing percentage is low, but that's because he's trying to cross more often than others do, so it's natural to misplace more crosses than short passes, so it's why his overall passing percentage bellow 80%. But you know it's more likely to create assist out of 10 crosses, and the other 9 being misplaced than making hundreds of successful nearby passes that provide no danger for the opposition.

At that price I would like someone younger, so we can cash in something if it doesn't work out. At Gylfi's age, the pricetag drops a little every minute no matter how good he plays.

I just can't figure what formation we are going to play. Too many midfielders, too short of quality wingers. Rooney, Barkley, Sigurdsson, Davy... all of them are playing at their best behind the striker. Surely all of them except Rooney can play deeper, but there we have Gana, Morgan, Davies, Barry and some forgotten names like Besic and McCarthy. We need to offload three midfielders as we don't need so many, and sign one quality winger preferably playing on the right, as we currently have - Sandro, Bolasie, Lennon and Lookman, but surely we need to improve in that area. And we need a new number 9 of course.

Bolasie was a mistake. We should have never signed him.

What concerns me is that of yet we haven't signed anyone to score us 24 goals next season.

We didn't signed him knowing he will score 24 goals 3 years later, as we don't know if Sandro will score us 24 goals, but it's possible. It's uncertain that Lukaku will score 24 goals for United any time soon either.