Agreed. One more centre back and were okay in defence.
Two midfielders needed for Rakitic and Jordan and then a 20 goal season striker.
Sorted.
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The thing that scares me the most is that last season we started the season with a 1 in 50 chance of relegation, and this season we start with a 1 in 16 chance of relegation. I’ve been a Sevilla fan for more than 16 years, so I’m just hoping this year won’t be THAT year.
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Sevilla aren’t going to get relegated. Keep the faith men!
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Those numbers are pretty fair, although you have to question a poll that had Barcelona as the favorites to win the league at the start of last season.
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Seen some of Alex Telles his first interviews, a lot about passion and ambition. Lopetegui’s call was key they say, really good competition tho for Acuna. Not sure how Lopetegui sold it, and im also not sure if Lope sees him as starter. But both can play whole flank, and left mid even. So they will rotate enough between both I imagine.
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Yeah, their methods likely prioritize things like recent performance, player quality, market value of roster, etc, so in that sense, I think it is not surprising that the model last year said that Barcelona would have a better season than Real Madrid. I think it became clear relatively quickly that they weren’t performing at the standard level of a Messi-era Barcelona, but I’m not surprised to see the numbers suggested they could have had a strong season with the team they had
Not trying to be negative but I think we could very well struggle to get top 6 if a few more signings don’t come in.
So far we’ve lost our two star defenders and only signed one replacement and a back-up loan option. Not exactly setting the world on fire and it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the likes of Villareal, Sociedad and :poop: could pip us next season.
Trying to keep some sense of proportion though as there’s a few weeks of the market and hopefully a few new players come in. Suppose Lope is Mr Consistent for Top 4 as well! I suspect that is as much as we can hope for though as I feel we missed out on a big chance to win the league and get in with the big three last season.
We’ll see.
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I think Lope’s outcry for a ‘better squad’ came because he sensed that he wouldn’t be able to fight for top 4 with the current squad, rightfully so.
Now I don’t really know if going for option B’s and C’s rather than first options (Kehrer, Reguilon etc.) is the translation for a better squad, but let’s see.
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I don’t think Reguilón is so much better than Telles like you think. Telles was just in Brazil’s last squad while Reguilón is third choice left back for Tottenham and couldn’t start over Ryan Sessegnon last season.
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Reguilon was one of the key players that helped us win the EL.
He is a bigger threat to the starter spot than Telles for Acuna. Acuna is incomparable to Telles and only a serious drop of form (even that is doubtful) or an injury/suspension will prevent him from starting, while with Reguilon it would be a bit closer.
Reguilon knows La Liga well and especially Lope’s tactics, he would easily re-adapt here. I highly doubt that Telles will bring anything close to what Reguilon did in 2019-20 - so let’s see.
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It is reported that we have reached an agreement with Victor Nelsson (not Galatasaray).
I think this is a desperate attempt to try and make things work in the CB department. Most likely what happened is Lope adamantly asked for CB’s that can understand each other and play well together. What our management might not understand is that Galatasaray and specifically the Turkish league is not what it was before, in fact, it is totally different - for the worse.
Back then teams like Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Besiktas were doing very well in Europe and a they were attracting lots of decent players, above average, to play for them and seriously compete. I’m talking about at least 10+ years before. Gradually the league’s quality has deteriorated - now it attracts low quality footballers and their clubs are from from competitive in Europe.
Galatasaray in particular has done generally well last season as they were eliminated from Barca in the round of 16 in the EL. However, their league performance (in an already weaker league) was terrible. They finished 13th with 14 wins, 10 draws and 14 losses. They scored 51 goals and conceded 53 - 9th ranked defense in the league from goals conceded. This tells a lot.
Also what tells a lot is that Marcao, arguably their best player that we have signed, has lacked in fitness and has literally not played in ANY pre-season match so far. He is doubtful for the Cadiz match too and that will probably be the first time a direct replacement for a key CB (Diego Carlos) that doesn’t feature at all in pre-season and is doubtful to start the season.
Our club first mentioned lack of fitness and not being ready to play, then a slight injury… then what not, but the prognosis is not good already.
Now imagine, we are about to sign his weaker colleague (Marcao was already their best CB), only to satisfy the ‘chemistry’ needs, thus neglecting all the facts that I mentioned above.
This is beyond crazy at this point. Now, it is football and anything can happen… it might work along the way, but I still think we will suffer at the back this season. Granted, I didn’t expect much from Lope even with a full decent squad as I mentioned lots of times before. However, to sell his best CB’s and to provide 2 totally unproven CB’s in La Liga as replacement, from a league that has inferior fitness levels and training system like the Turkish league and from a club that did disastrously even in their own standard in their league… I really don’t know what to say anymore.
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Yes you do: In Monchi We Trust.
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This exactly. I trust monchi and still believe we will do well this season. We had to move on from Carlos and Kounde as they wanted moves and had clubs after them.
We still have a good squad and I expect monchi to bolster it in the positions we need. We may have to wait till end of August and further into season for new signings to help but I believe he will get them.
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Player for player I agree that we right now seem to have downgraded. I rate Telles higher than Augustinsson, but Kounde and DC (at this moment) do not seem to have been properly replaced.
Another overlooked signing is the medical staff though. Could we just cut the amount of injuries in half compared to last season, that would be a huge improvement. So yeah, it seems we need a few holes patched up, but it also seems Monchi is well on the case.
Hopes are high for the season, but I also hope we don’t der performances like the ones against Arsenal and Leicester.
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I agree with your assessment. We all knew that Kounde and Carlos were leaving soon so their departure is now surprise. Marcao should be a very serviceable replacement. That’s fine. No one expected us to get better at CB this summer.
The only other swap we have is at LB, and it’s probably an improvement.
So, we haven’t gotten much worse, and the regression is at a position we all knew was bound to happen any way. Our other signing is an improvement.
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How?
Marcao - Nelsson >>> Kounde - DC ?
Also the new LB was loaned as a sub replacement, not a starter, and temporarily.
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Yeah but Steve is saying we haven’t got much worse… if that is not much worse I don’t know what is. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe Marcao (who hasn’t played a single pre-season game and is still not match-fit) and Nelsson (his weaker CB partner) are going to perform better or similar to Kounde and DC.
You never know in football, as they say, the ball is round 
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I’m saying we haven’t gotten worse outside of CB, and we all knew that we would regress at that position. There was no reasonable way to expect us to get better there after selling Kounde and Carlos.
So, if we set that aside and look at the other positions, we’re largely the same team as last year. Telles is an upgrade, and we’ll see what happens with the midfield between now and when the window closes.
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Did you know how good DC was when he was at Nantes? And we all saw Kounde struggle those early days, especially at Eibar. A ball hasn’t been kicked yet, so we can’t write off those guys already.
Marcao was part of UEL’s best XI, and together with Nelsson was the only good thing about that team. From what i’ve read, Gala’s defensive failures were happening in front of the CBs. Besides, our main man Fernando should be a reminder never to doubt Monchi doing business in Turkey.
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There’s still a chance to sign Kehrer and balance things out a bit.
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