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I’d be against signing Eriksen who is still undoubtedly a wry good footballer, but I’d rather we sign a younger player on the up in the mould of him in terms of his attacking and playmaking game myself.

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1 hour ago, wormy said:

Doea anyone imagine Eriksen could give Brentford another year at least as a thank you for giving him a chance? Or has he proven he's still got too much quality to waste his early 30s at a mid-table club? 

 

Yeah, I think he owes them another season.

 

Easy to say when it's not my career, though.

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If it was a choice, I'd go for Eriksen well ahead of Lingard. I agree with the club looking to lower the age of the squad but I also like the idea of a few older top pros who have been there and done it to be role models, leaders on and off the pitch, help raise the standards in the club and also maintain team discipline. They would also play a key part in helping young overseas players settle and let them know what is expected. The question that poses is are there many older players from the Ashley era who could act as role models for promising young players we sign in the future? 

 

What got me thinking about the above is the situation at Man U, where from the outside it looks like they are really missing older players to set the tone for younger players to follow. 

 

 

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I can understand this, he's only contracted at Brentford till the summer if I belive correctly. So there would be no fee, he'd add a huge amount of Premier League experience and he's clearly still capable of performing at this level.

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20 hours ago, macphisto said:

I really don't get this kind of thinking, why would you put off changes that you'll make at some point in the future? Take away Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea and possibly Spurs and we are more than capable of matching any other team by the end of the 2023/24 summer transfer window if we make the right signings, starting this summer. One other thing to bear in mind regarding FFP, prices are only going to go up in the future so if we can get the right players now then we should go for them as we'll save money. 

 

 

This was in response to me and I have a lot of sympathy with it. It's the evolution vs. revolution debate though. Staveley etc. themselves have said that they want an evolution based approach. If the goal is for Top 6-8 next season, the bar is not that high and can be achieved through evolution of what we have. Howe has talked about team spirit across the camp. I reckon Top 6-8 can be achieved with maybe only two new first team players (attackers of course) and upgrades on Darlow, Krafth etc. To seriously challenge for Top 4, we need seven or eight new starters, which is massive investment and rips up the whole team leaving Bruno, Trippier and a few backups. Everyone else ends up in the "replace him" spotlight. We have come so far in a few short months with Howe, with a whole clearly exceeding the sum of the parts, and it would be nice to see how things can evolve further without rushing to replace Targett (as Villa did), Burn, Joelinton etc. with expensive players who may not prove to be significant upgrades. I don't think he's ultimately Top 4, but I'd like to see another season of ASM, or at least one season where he's not the team's only outball and can receive it thirty yards from their goal, not forty yards from ours.

 

If big cash is to be spent, which I'm certainly not against, let it be on a forward or wide forward and not on a simple disruptor like Kalvin Phillips.

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The bar is very high for top 6-8 imo.

 

I think the evolution vs revolution talk by Staveley is to keep prices down. We aren't going to force massive transfers. We aren't going to force it. If we can only get 3-4 top class first team members we'll do just that. That might mean starting with Schar-Burn but we could end up with a new partnership if the players and price is right.

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30 minutes ago, Stottie said:

This was in response to me and I have a lot of sympathy with it. It's the evolution vs. revolution debate though. Staveley etc. themselves have said that they want an evolution based approach. If the goal is for Top 6-8 next season, the bar is not that high and can be achieved through evolution of what we have. Howe has talked about team spirit across the camp. I reckon Top 6-8 can be achieved with maybe only two new first team players (attackers of course) and upgrades on Darlow, Krafth etc. To seriously challenge for Top 4, we need seven or eight new starters, which is massive investment and rips up the whole team leaving Bruno, Trippier and a few backups. Everyone else ends up in the "replace him" spotlight. We have come so far in a few short months with Howe, with a whole clearly exceeding the sum of the parts, and it would be nice to see how things can evolve further without rushing to replace Targett (as Villa did), Burn, Joelinton etc. with expensive players who may not prove to be significant upgrades. I don't think he's ultimately Top 4, but I'd like to see another season of ASM, or at least one season where he's not the team's only outball and can receive it thirty yards from their goal, not forty yards from ours.

 

If big cash is to be spent, which I'm certainly not against, let it be on a forward or wide forward and not on a simple disruptor like Kalvin Phillips.

I would read more into the actions of Stavely and Howe more than their words. Stavely can't publicly come out and say they will spend a load of money as that would lead to inflated transfer fees and unbearable scrutiny given the opposition to Saudi ownership. It is also worth noting though that she wants us challenging in 5 years which doesn't indicate evolution. Same with Howe, in the middle of a relegation fight until recent weeks so he had no other choice than to build team spirit. He even said this week that Gayle is the best trainer at the club and yet he's hardly ever used him. 

 

With regards to the summer, if we eventually need seven or eight new starters then why not start the process now with say four/five players? Bear in mind some/most of the the players we sign, like Bruno, won't be at the top of their game but clearly have huge potential for them to be special players in the future. They will also most likely come from overseas and will need time to adapt to the league. We also have to factor in that even with the best recruitment team not every transfer will work out. So say in the best realistic scenario that we sign five 1st team players this summer, it is likely that only four at the very most will work out in the long term.  

 

Personally, I can see the following positions being targeted this summer and I don't see any point in keeping any of the current players in brackets, even as squad players:

Goalkeeper (Dubravka)

Centre half (Lascelles & Fernández (is he out of contract?))

Midfield (I don't think we click as a unit & would bin Longstaff)

Forward (Nothing needs to be said)

Wide forward (Almiron)

 

The transfers could be made up from top quality free players such as Eriksen to players like Phillips who would cost around £60 million (used midfield as an example of our options with regards to transfer fees. I'm not advocating Phillips, just an example).

 

One thing to note about the upcoming season, we don't know what impact the World Cup will have? I could see a scenario where players like Willock might not get a game at the beginning of the season but post-world cup he might get a run of games in place of Bruno as he recovers from being in Qatar. 

 

Make the changes above and with the right recruitment we would have a very competitive team. Not only would the new players themselves benefit the team but I could also see players like Joelinton/Burn/ASM stepping up their game and keeping the new recruits out of the team, particularly as some recruits will take time to adapt to the league. 

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Just now, TRC said:

Chelsea if their sale goes through? Arsenal too

I don’t think Chelsea need a striker, Arsenal do however but they were linked with Isak. 
 

point being, the asking price means he doesn’t have a lot of options. 

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