Which players to keep, and which not!

Portugal are turning into Wolves. Negative, too defensive, no cutting edge, and not committing enough men forward.

Also, my fear is that they rely far too much on players from one country and that never bodes well.

😱

Just looked at that list of retained players. Quite staggered at the number of U24s under contract - 44.

Even more shocking is the banner displayed under the list - "End of Season Sale", with Traore's face beaming out

The thing that struck me about that list was that we've got an over 24 player on contract called Tote Gomes.

Surprised that Hong Wan didn't get retained, I thought he looked useful in the u23 games I saw, not PL potential but capable of developing into a pro at some level.

Today's news - were selling Neves to Arsenal, and Villa are buying the excellent Emi Buendia for 38m.

A. I hope we get more than that for Neves. And B. I wonder if we see ourselves as competing with Villa and the money they spend - perhaps best of the rest isn't the aim any more and instead we're going to aim to stay in the league for a few years while we slowly build the brand to enable us to compete financially at a higher level.

No real doubt in my mind Villa are about to pass us over the next few seasons. Concerned about Leeds as well though Bielsa leaving would hopefully slow them down. West Ham may be another, could go either way with a Euro run wearing them down. But yeah I think the next few seasons we can forget any idea of cracking the top six as we have enough to compete with from the rest.

comment by (U17339)
posted 1 hour, 32 minutes ago
Today's news - were selling Neves to Arsenal,
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Arsenal are considering a move for Wolves star Ruben Neves, the Express & Star understands.

Two very different statements. I doubt we will agree to buy or sell anyone before the new manager is in place.

Sorry if it wasn't clear that my comment wasn't official confirmation of an actual sale having taken place, my point was more about the respective positions in the market of Villa and Wolves. Who knows if he'll go or not and to whom, but the noises out of wolves are the important thing - ie sales required to fund any meaningful purchases.

I would much rather we kept Neves on balance but there's an argument to say that he's served his purpose for us and this is the time to sell with him approaching his peak years. He probably could use a new challenge to after going a bit stale this season. He's probably at his most saleable right now. The problem would be finding a replacement, there's no one in the squad currently and we can't really gamble on a kid in that role with minimal cover. That's not too day that we could attract a quality player with experience in to that role but you'd need a large percentage of the cash generated by the sale to bring in that quality thus leaving little for investment elsewhere. Which is why on balance I'd rather he stayed.

Yo Cinci, I sent you the link in the ‘Euro Build up thread’, or just click on my name and find the article there for Euro Fantasy

comment by StringerBell (U11749)
posted 2 hours, 14 minutes ago
Yo Cinci, I sent you the link in the ‘Euro Build up thread’, or just click on my name and find the article there for Euro Fantasy
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Cheers String, shall take a look