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Should I stay or should I go? - retained/released 2020/21

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    Should I stay or should I go? - retained/released 2020/21

    Haven't seen one of these yet and they're always fun. I think a lot of clubs' retained/released lists are all but confirmed anyway by now, but we might as well:

    Chelsea
    Pedro and Morata have moved on, the former was a good servant and I can see him going to one of the far-East noddy leagues for a final payday. Mario Pasalic, who never played, and Willian, are the other confirmed senior departures. Willian will do well at Arsenal and I'm a bit worried it could backfire on us badly.

    Ziyech and Werner have signed and I'm incredibly excited by Werner particularly, despite knowing that 90% of exciting young strikers we sign end up flopping badly and only big bastard types tend to succeed here. One from Kepa and Caballero will be moved on (I'd keep Kepa for another season and pick Bravo up for the bench), plus the usual slew of youths.

    What about your team?

    #2
    Burnley released Joe Hart, Aaron Lennon, Jeff Hendrick, Alex Legdzins and Phil Bardsley, before re-signing the last in a bit of a panic after Matt Lowton got injured. I'm not crying into my beer at the loss of any of them, including Hendrick but mainly because he has become the unfair whipping boy for the crowd by being played in a way totally unsuited to his talents.

    Ben Mee signed an one year extension to his contract, or maybe it was an automatic option exercised by one party of the other.

    As for the rest, I'd keep them all. Although Nick Pope was linked with Chelsea and clubs are hovering around Dwight McNeil. You'd have to offer silly money to get them though.

    We need cover at right back (Matty Cash of Forest has been mentioned), centre back (Kevin Long is not the answer) and a winger who wasn't made of glass would be nice. Much as I love JBG, having him and Brady available for a total of what felt like 15 games in the season is no way to go on.

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      #3
      The PL lists were released a few weeks ago. Villa have let James Chester and Andre Green go, also Rushian Hepburn-Murphy who I think was our youngest first team player ever a few years ago.
      Delighted to see the back of arguably our most expensive waste of space ever, Ross 'stepladder' McCormack. Also our most pointless signing, Borja Baston.

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        #4
        Man utd released 10 young players including angel gomes, who is off to france, which isn't a bad move from his perspective. He's clearly a very talented player, but I don't see how he was going to get the game time to develop. Same with Largie Ramazani, who is off to almeria. Also gone is Cameron Borthwick Jackson. In a parallel universe where man utd didn't sack louis van gaal, borthwick jackson and fosu mensah are coming up on 150 appearances for man utd. He's also a salutary lesson in the dangers of a bad loan.

        Man utd have also got out of the Alexis Sanchez black hole, and have cauterized the weeping financial wound. That just leaves Chris Smalling, marcos Rojo, Phil Jones, diogo dalot, and probably jesse lingard to nudge towards the door, along with one of the three goalkeepers. Four of the above five are too old, and any time the opportunity to play a first team game comes up dalot, is injured. There's a few players at man utd that have this problem, and it can completely derail your career as a young player. Axel Tuanzebe started the season as second choice centre half, then harry Maguire pushed him down to third, however he managed to pick up enough injuries to be injured every time an opportunity to play came up, (Europa league, league cup, league appearances) so we have no idea if he's any good or not and his development has completely stalled. Much the same is true of Eric Bailly. It's the same trap that Phil Jones fell into as well. The same is true of wes brown, who did every major injury, on both legs.

        Any championship club looking for a midfielder on loan would do well to get a hold of James Garner. He looks like the real deal. He's a defensive shield/deeplying playmaker/box to box midfielder who averages 3 goals in every four games at under age level. That and he's bringing back the rockford files.

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          #5
          Originally posted by 1974ddr View Post
          The PL lists were released a few weeks ago. Villa have let James Chester and Andre Green go, also Rushian Hepburn-Murphy who I think was our youngest first team player ever a few years ago.
          Delighted to see the back of arguably our most expensive waste of space ever, Ross 'stepladder' McCormack. Also our most pointless signing, Borja Baston.
          Chester has signed permanently for Stoke after his very successful loan spell from January contributed to keeping them up.

          I was surprised to hear McCormack had still been at Villa and wiki has him being released by them in the summer of 2019, is that incorrect?

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            #6
            We've now all but signed Kai Havertz too. As much as we badly need defensive cover and that should be a priority, I'm pretty excited by a Havertz-Ziyech-Werner front line.

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              #7
              Originally posted by hawkvshandsaw View Post
              We've now all but signed Kai Havertz too. As much as we badly need defensive cover and that should be a priority, I'm pretty excited by a Havertz-Ziyech-Werner front line.

              Is it that close? Leverkusen seem to want top dollar for the guy and I wasn't convinced that we'd go that high. But yes, it's the other end of the pitch that I'm more worried about.

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                #8
                Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post


                Is it that close? Leverkusen seem to want top dollar for the guy and I wasn't convinced that we'd go that high. But yes, it's the other end of the pitch that I'm more worried about.
                Only the silly papers reporting it, but it seems to be very much on - he's agreed to sign but the fee is 90 million and you might well be right that we end up pulling out. Apparently his mind was made up by them getting knocked out of the Europa last night, an event which will also make up a large part of his Chelsea career most likely.
                Last edited by hawkvshandsaw; 11-08-2020, 11:52.

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                  #9
                  The thing that I don't understand about what chelsea are doing, is why are they trying to replace their best young players? Abraham started the season playing really well, and scored loads of goals, and it was abundantly clear that he had all the things you need to be a modern centre forward, The moment teams started to adapt to him, and he started getting injured, Frank brought back Giroud, and signed timo werner. The thought that went through my head watching Mason Mount's freekick against wolves, is that he's just scored the goal that allows chelsea to buy the player to shit on his career.

                  Is Kai Havertz really that much better than Mason Mount? Or are you looking at the difference between a player, who's played 120 top flight games in a league that is very flattering to attacking midfielders, and the Europa league, and a player who's only played one season in the premier league and the champions league? It's almost like these young players represent the unbelievable hardships he faced, and he's already banked the credit for making them into first team players, and now once the credit, and excuses have been safely banked, it's onto the next set of players. I get that Chelsea might want an upgrade on Ross Barkley as cover in attacking midfield, but to replace him with mount doesn't augur well for the future.

                  I notice Frank was blaming individiual errors for chelsea's defeat to bayern. Players get awful fucking sick of that sort of carry on if you keep it up long enough.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                    The thing that I don't understand about what chelsea are doing, is why are they trying to replace their best young players? Abraham started the season playing really well, and scored loads of goals, and it was abundantly clear that he had all the things you need to be a modern centre forward, The moment teams started to adapt to him, and he started getting injured, Frank brought back Giroud, and signed timo werner. The thought that went through my head watching Mason Mount's freekick against wolves, is that he's just scored the goal that allows chelsea to buy the player to shit on his career.

                    Is Kai Havertz really that much better than Mason Mount? Or are you looking at the difference between a player, who's played 120 top flight games in a league that is very flattering to attacking midfielders, and the Europa league, and a player who's only played one season in the premier league and the champions league? It's almost like these young players represent the unbelievable hardships he faced, and he's already banked the credit for making them into first team players, and now once the credit, and excuses have been safely banked, it's onto the next set of players. I get that Chelsea might want an upgrade on Ross Barkley as cover in attacking midfield, but to replace him with mount doesn't augur well for the future.

                    I notice Frank was blaming individiual errors for chelsea's defeat to bayern. Players get awful fucking sick of that sort of carry on if you keep it up long enough.
                    I can't say I've seen that much of Havertz, but he certainly looks more consistent than Mount, who's a good talent but does blow hot and cold. Obviously that's due to inexperience and getting used to the league, but there's a general feeling amongst fans that he might not be quite good enough to start every week for a top 4 side. I agree Tammy has been slightly hard done by, but we're not 'replacing our best young players' - Pulisic, Zouma and James are still very much in Lampard's first-team plans. We're testing out new signings in areas of the pitch where we fell short last season, like every other team in the country. And frankly, given our record with signing strikers, I wouldn't be surprised if Werner flops massively and we're back to Tammy and Giroud.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by hawkvshandsaw View Post

                      I can't say I've seen that much of Havertz, but he certainly looks more consistent than Mount, who's a good talent but does blow hot and cold. Obviously that's due to inexperience and getting used to the league, but there's a general feeling amongst fans that he might not be quite good enough to start every week for a top 4 side. I agree Tammy has been slightly hard done by, but we're not 'replacing our best young players' - Pulisic, Zouma and James are still very much in Lampard's first-team plans. We're testing out new signings in areas of the pitch where we fell short last season, like every other team in the country. And frankly, given our record with signing strikers, I wouldn't be surprised if Werner flops massively and we're back to Tammy and Giroud.

                      Good summary, there, Hawky, though I'll confess that I haven't heard too many moans about MM, doubt that Kurt's place is that safe (a Brighton fan friend texted me this morning claiming that we're interested in Lewis Dunk) and would be surprised in Werner isn't a success, unless he's unlucky with injuries.

                      Not biggies, but Jacob Maddox has gone to Vitoria de Guimaraes and one of the interchangeable, never-get-a-sniff young Croats and Serbs on our books, Danilo Pantić, has gone out on loan again.

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post


                        Good summary, there, Hawky, though I'll confess that I haven't heard too many moans about MM, doubt that Kurt's place is that safe (a Brighton fan friend texted me this morning claiming that we're interested in Lewis Dunk) and would be surprised in Werner isn't a success, unless he's unlucky with injuries.

                        Not biggies, but Jacob Maddox has gone to Vitoria de Guimaraes and one of the interchangeable, never-get-a-sniff young Croats and Serbs on our books, Danilo Pantić, has gone out on loan again.
                        Oh I think Werner's a cut above Morata, Batshuayi and the rest of them, but I'm always sceptical about new strikers these days, been burned too many times. Agree that Zouma wasn't brilliant this season and I would have liked to see Ake come back, but we're not 'replacing our best young players' wholesale ffs.
                        Last edited by hawkvshandsaw; 16-08-2020, 10:01.

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