The Press Box - Ep. 154: 'Euro Soccer Transfers' With Chris Ryan and Ryan O'Hanlon

Episode Date: July 22, 2016

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Ryan O’Hanlon talk about England’s manager search (2:30), Paul Pogba’s rumored move to Manchester United (10:00), the role of agents in transfers (11:00), and how Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool have gone about team building (25:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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hoodies and shirts. Hello, and welcome to Channel 33's soccer podcast. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And I'm Ryan O'Hanlin. I'm also an editor at the ringer.com. And Ryan is one of our chief, you are a chief soccer writer. Who's your competition? Kevin Clark. Yeah, that's true. And we've retired his number. He's gone forever. Yeah, this is Kevin Clark's testimonial podcast. No, Ryan and our year, it's a post-Euro's time of year. We're getting ready for the season, unbelievably. Community Shield is August 7th.

Is that real? It's crazy. How is that possible? The season itself starts the next week. Ryan, but now, I mean, the cool thing about this time of year is it is transfer season, which is a time for everybody with an internet connection to pretend to be experts on currency value, contract add-ons, agent fees, and financial stability of certain. multi-billion dollar franchises.

Amortization. Yeah, exactly. Before we get into transfer rumors and talking about transfers in general, let's just hit some news. And I think the big news coming out of the Euros, aside from Mark Wilmots finally getting fired, much to your delight, is obviously Roy Hodgson was fired or relieved or at his duties, or he stepped down, however you want to put it,

after England lost to Iceland in the Euros. And the news started immediately speculating on who would be as a replacement. And for a while there, we almost sent Yergen Klinsman back over the pond to Europe. But instead, Sam Allardyce, most recently of Sunderland, is going to be taking over England. What is your take on Big Sam coaching England? First of all, I want to say it's a shame that the German-American soccer Messiah could not add England to that convoluted title. That would have been quite the triple board score for him.

Yeah. Yeah. I honestly, I like the big Sam. Two-year deal. Higher. Three World Cup. You know, it's England are hiring a manager from one of the worst teams in the Premier League. That's one way we can look at this. Yeah, you could usually say that when you're talking about any team that Sam Alarice has managed.

That's true. I mean, he's actually had a couple of like seven, eight place finishes in the Premier League, right? Yeah, his Bolton teams were fun back in the day with a coach shot. I just remember Bolton, like, always breaking dude's legs, fairly or unfairly. I just feel like I just did like a sea of arsenal bodies. Well, yeah, they had that and then they had like one or two guys who you liked watching to like paper over it. They had Jack Wilster on loan when Owen Coyle. I remember that that Bolton team was actually pretty fun.

Sturge was on loan there too. Oh, yeah. Should we just make this a Bolton podcast? Are they like the conference now? I don't even know. Yeah. But I like it. I mean, it's part of what we, one of the big teams we talked about in the Euros is that

you know, international soccer is just really not home to any of the elite managers. Right. And to expect England to have hired some like Jose Marino level guy, I think is just completely unrealistic. Right. And I think Big Sam knows, I keep calling him Big Sam, like his younger brother or something. But I think he, you know, knows the English game well. and he does every team he's managed he's sort of exceeded expectations in a way that's partially because I think he takes a lot of low expectation jobs and the England job is the exact opposite of that

yeah he takes teams in distress solidifies them makes them very hard to beat starts every game with the idea that that's a point yeah all you have to do is lose that point and typically you know after a couple of years he gets the best results and then the team tunes them out slash he starts to get a little ornery about how he wishes he could be buying bigger players or looking for a bigger job. So he's been, it's been Bolton, it's been Newcastle, it's been Sunderland. Westtown. The thing is that England is a team in distress and is a team that needs to be solidified

and it is a team that probably needs to be a little bit more cynical because they don't necessarily have the talent to play like flashy football. Yeah, and it's sort of a question of like what they want to achieve, right? Because it's, I think in England they want to just win. whatever competition there in. That's like the ultimate goal in the back of people's minds, even if they're not saying it, just because, you know, England is the home of the sport. Yes, that's in quotes. And the Premier League's there. But I think the thing is they just, you really just want consistent performances. You don't, you want your team to sort of at least,

at worst, meet your talent level, right? Which they didn't do at these euros. And they seem to almost never do. I think that the underlying message here is Sam Allardis would not have let us lose to Iceland. Yeah, exactly. Like even if somebody had to go down and siph down in Iceland and the thing is if you don't lose to Iceland, then you're in the quarterfinals. That's probably about where you are anyway, top eight teams. When you get to the quarterfinals, who knows what happens. I'm very excited about the prospect of Allardyce and Russia, just in general. But I think that we want to talk a little bit about what this means insanely enough for the USMNT, because this was the first sort of taste that America,

the United States had of their manager possibly getting poached. I mean, that's never, I don't think, happened before for our national team. No. When you were dealing with the very real prospect of, or the possibly real prospect, I think it may have just been, Yergen Cleansman's agent is very good at keeping his name in the press, but when you were considering that, what was your, were you thinking, that's fine, take him?

Were you thinking, oh, God, please know, his work is not done? year. If I position myself as an American soccer fan, a realistic American soccer fan, I would have wanted someone to take him off my hands because it does sort of seem like the people that are most invested in Yergen-Klemsman are the people at the top of U.S. soccer and like no one else in U.S. soccer. I think he sort of came in with all of these sort of high-minded ideals for how to fix American soccer, which is fine, but like the American soccer problem is, you know, at once we have

all of the resources in the world, but at the same time, we're such a big country that it's so hard to get your arms around those resources and develop players. And Cleansman is just like he's sort of an idealist. He's not, you know, the most nuanced intelligence, intelligent in a nuanced way person you'll meet. And his game-to-game tactics are just not good. I think he would have been in a weird way perfect for England. First of all, he's a personality who probably could have handled the pressure of the media.

Second of all, I think he's in some ways the flip side of the coin of Sam Howardice. He's somebody you bring in when there is talent there already. And there is people, there are players who kind of know what they're doing but need to just feel good about the project. He's like a great cheerleader. But I don't know that he can make an average midfielder above average. Exactly. I think he can make an above average midfielder feel really good about who he is. is.

Exactly. I mean, there's, the thing that we can conflate is, like, the manager of the U.S. national team is not the person overseeing the development of,

like, Klinsman is because he's the technical director, but the specific manager of the U.S., his job is to just make the national team perform at the highest level, right? He's not necessarily developing this deep, embedded soccer culture

within the country, and Klinsman doesn't do that. The results of the team are roughly the exact same as they were under Bob Bradley. And the U.S. wants a guy that can help the talent level of this team punch above its weight, right?

Right. Which Clemsman just isn't. Maybe with a talented team, Clemsman can kind of do the will Motsie and roll the ball out there and just do it guys. Or he'd just get somebody who, like a yogi love, who understands tactics maybe a little bit better. And Juergen's job is to put an arm around the guy

and say like you're the best right back I've ever seen. Yeah. You just have to find it within yourself. Yeah. I don't know if that's actually what happens. Okay, so that's the manager's side of things. Yes or no question. Okay.

Is Yurgen Cleansman managing the USMNT in Russia in 2018? Yes. Okay. Is that his last tournament for us? Yes. Okay. His contract goes till 2020, I think? I think it's through 2018.

2018. Okay. The other big news right now in world soccer is the ongoing transfer saga of Paul Pagba. So Pagba is the first. French midfielder who plays for Juventus in the Italian Syria. He is probably the most coveted for sale player right now. I mean, to the extent that Juventus wants to sell him.

You wrote a piece before the Euro started about Pagba and how there is usually a ripple effect signing, right? About how every summer there's a signing that can change the league the player is leaving, the league the player is arriving to, and all these teams around it because these teams have to change their shopping lists based on what's happening. And we're seeing like an incredible arms race happen in one right now because of all the managerial talent. There's a lot like these guys are really good recruiters. It looks like Manchester United is going to get Pagba, which is hysterical because they let him go for free.

And now they are paying in some reports upwards of 100 million euros for him with a 220,000 per week salary I saw. This has been an incredible story. Pagba's in Miami playing basketball with Ramaloo Lakaku. His barber apparently tweeted that. that he was going to be sold to Manchester United imminently? Yeah, Instagram. I think. He's definitely the ripple effect.

Let's talk about some of the ripples, okay? Do you think Paul Pagba is the kind of player that puts United in the top two for the Premier League? I don't know if he puts them in the top two immediately, but I think he puts them, like, well on the path to being where they want to be, which is back in the Champions League and next year and back, you know, atop the Premier League. sooner rather than later, I think, you know, the rumor is what, 100 million pounds? Is it as a pound? So I don't even know how much a pound is worth anymore. That's like basically like $30, right? Exactly.

So it's like, that's like what the two of us would cost on the open market. But I think that's, that's. If Juventus wants to buy me with the proceeds from this. They could buy both of us and it wouldn't like adversely affect the team at all. I'll get Rosetta Stone. I'm happy to learn conversational Italian. That's the only thing is keeping you away from being in Syria. It's a lot of money, and I think the way it's set up with incentives or whatever

performance-related bonuses would make it the highest transfer of all time. And I think that is partially because Man United has to pay that amount of money to get this quality player. Yes, because they're outside of the Champions League. Yeah, they're outside of the Champions League, and he's, like you said, he's the best player available. I think that this is as good a place to any, you know, I'm sure that if anybody's listening, at this podcast they probably have like a vague at least a vague idea of how transfers work but it pogba's transfers like illustrative of a good it's a good way to say like why why would somebody

want to leave the multi-time Italian champions who regularly are in the final four of the champions league he's got good money he's living in a nice city in turn like what's what why does pogba want to leave especially go back to a club he's already left once so there's obviously a couple different things to play here you might want to leave because you want to get better wages because you can be offered a higher wage packet. There's more money in TV in the Premier League than there is in Syriot. Frankly, there's just more intensity, I think, surrounding like scrutiny in terms of international television audience surrounding the Premier League.

So you get that increased international exposure through Champions League or higher profile domestic games. Liverpool, Manchester United is going to be a very watched game, regardless of the fact that neither of those teams is in Champions League. And this can lead to more valuable endorsement deals, which is obviously something Pagva has been exploring the Adidas commercially made shot with Puscher for America. Like he is trying to make himself a known quantity throughout the Western world. Yeah.

And beyond what he's trying to do, he's got a very powerful agent. What's his name is, it's Mino Raiola? Yeah. And that's also a lot in Ibrahimovich's agent. And that's where you have to really consider the role of the agent in these negotiations and in these deals. because, without saying anything positive or negative about them, there's really not a lot for an agent to do unless the player is transferring. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of psychological and maintenance stuff that you can do.

But those guys make their bones getting fees for pushing through transfers. Yeah, and because of the transfer structure, it's just like you don't hear about as often as you do in American sports about players' contracts. Yeah. Like you don't hear about how Stefan Curry is. the biggest bargain in the NBA and what are the warriors going to do once his contracts up you don't hear about that in soccer and that's what the agent does right in American sports I can't even begin to speculate how many transfers are like the work of an agent well just wanting to move his player so he can skim some money oh and and quite frankly are the work of an agent from soup to nuts yeah are the

work of an agent going to other teams and saying what about would you be interested in my client would you be, what kind of role with my client have on your team? What kind of wages would you be able to offer? What kind of opportunities in terms of endorsements or sponsorship or image rights are talking about? Would he be the billboard, the person on a billboard saying, welcome to Manchester? Yeah.

And if you want to see an example of this at work, and I don't mean, I'm not even implying anything nefarious, but think about what just happened in the States this summer. LeBron James, almost single-handedly, along with, you know, some other guys, but comes back from 3-1 down to be the best. regular season NBA team of all time. And a week later, we're talking entirely about Kevin Durant. Yeah. Entirely.

And, you know, the Euros just happened and France lost. Yeah. And all we're talking about is Paul Pagba. That's true. This is good agenting. Like, Paul Pagba has been discussed on the Guardian in the Daily Mail. Every movie's made has been documented and fawned over and speculated upon. This is what we want to talk about in the summers is player movement.

So this is where the agents make their money. It is. And, you know, there's a benefit to, like I was saying, Manu is desperate for Pagba. So they're going to pay more than anyone else in the world, I think is willing to pay. So there's a benefit to the agent for bringing his player to a team that pays the most because he gets a certain percentage of that transfer fee.

When I think about the best marina midfield, though, Mm-hmm. Pagba doesn't seem like a typical marina midfielder. He seems like much more of like an improviser and a freelancer. Yeah. I think of, you know, those inter-midfields of like Tiago Mata. I don't know. Matarazzi didn't play a lot.

Who else is in those midfields? Like I think of like Modich and Essian, McAulaley. I guess Lampard went vertical a lot. But Pagba is such like a perfect midfielder, but also a very atypical one. Yeah. Well, the way to look at it is like, Think about two years ago when Chelsea just sort of walked to the Premier League title. They had Namanya Monich, this once great defensive midfielder.

We'll see what happens with him in the future. What is the crazy drop-off for him? Yeah. Like had some kind of disease maybe that he didn't realize he had? I'm speculating. That's like the way to explain his performance. He played Cess Fabragas, who's an attacking midfielder deeper in midfield right next to Mattich. And it's like a creative midfield or that deep in midfield, like Pogba can do that a hundred times better than Fabragas.

I can. Because he has all of the, he has more athleticism and can provide more defensively and can run with the ball at his feet. So it's like you mentioned Lampart. If Marino wants Pogba to play the Lampart role, he can do that better than Lampart could. So I think it's sort of up to Marino. As we kind of found out this summer with France, it's sort of like Pogba is so good at everything and he can do anything. you need to pick what you want him to do that one maximizes his talents the most and helps your team the most. There's a couple of different kinds of ways to approach buying players, right?

So there's the way that Edward Woodward would like to do this, which is to buy the most expensive, most famous player and make a huge splash. Because I think he's got some metrics that suggest that's the way to generate interest in your brand. that's the way you get you know Chinese television and super subscriptions and full stadiums on preseason tours and jersey sales it's something weird today about jersey sales and that Anthony Marshael

was the number one jersey for Manu I don't know was that true I saw a Cid Lode from the Guardian tweeting about that or putting up a tweet from somebody else about that I thought that was really interesting though yeah so you could do that you can go after the big names typically Barsa

Byron Riao Manu, Chelsea, Man City. Those are the type of names they go for. Weird way, I think city's kind of fallen off in that department a little bit. I think they've... Which is probably a good thing.

Yeah, I think not necessarily... I think that city's going to be great, actually. I don't think that that really matters. If they get Tony Cruz, I'm going to probably get a tattoo of Manchester City into my back. And then you can do the Arsenal way, which is sort of to buy the guy who got left out of the rotation in one of those big clubs,

be it Alexis Sanchez or Mesodosal. Yeah. Then you can do the Newcastle kind of buy to sell thing where you scout, say, a French league, the Dutch league, the Belgian league, wherever to get players come in on 5,7, 12 million, now probably $20 million pound deals. And then you sell those guys with an eye towards selling them on after a year or two. Yeah. But then there's the teams I think you and I are both the most interested in. And those are the Juvenas's, the Liverpool's, the Perusia Dortmunds, who seem to really focus on identifying. good talent that they are going to like use their coaching staff they're going to slip those guys

to their coaching staff and hope to build them into the next was latans pagas agueros silvas whoever yeah that's the most exciting thing for me and the more i've been listening to transfer talk this summer the more i've been thinking about how much money is probably paid in a premium just for the name when you don't actually think about louis swarez was an erodevise striker six years ago. You know what I mean? Namar was just a guy at Santos. These players, even though they probably had some hype around them,

you eventually have to put the work into them. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about what Dortmund and Liverpool have been doing because these are two teams that are pretty close to our hearts. Yeah. I think at some point you said to me, somebody should just look at what Dortmund is doing and buy every guy that they're interested in because they're basically replaced with the exception of Goetz

are coming back and some of the other guys came back. They've replaced the Klop team. Yeah. They've totally replaced it. And it's just like, yeah, like what I was saying to you is, if you see a guy rumored as being associated with Borisi Dortmund, possible transfer there, you should just go try to buy them. And knowing how smart Barisie Dortmund is, they'd probably just start putting out misinformation and making, you know, Liverpool and Tottenham by the wrong player. Yeah, right. By saying they're associated with them.

But I think the thing is, like, there are, like, teams like Newcastle, you mentioned. And with their owner, like Ashley, they're sort of running the team like a business and you want to just turn over. You want to turn over every player and you don't even really care. You don't really give a shit about how good your team is. Yeah, you'd like to stay in the league for the TV money, but falling out of the league is the parachute payments aren't bad either. Yeah, while Dortmund is sort of at once running their team like a business and that they buy guys that they know they're going to. Yeah, Obamaiang will get sold. Yeah, and they'll raise these guys values.

but they also are buying guys that they know will be able to contribute to their team at a very high level and, you know, allow them to compete in the Champions League. So it's a sort of a balancing act of like matching your ambitions with your economic reality, which they do with like better than anyone. Like the summer they've bought.

Oussman Dembele is the big one, right? I mean, like in terms of so far what we've seen from him, it's just like, oh, this guy is going to be on Real Madrid in five years. Yeah, or like after next season. Like he looks like the best sucker player I've ever seen. It's insane, though.

I mean, and this is great for them. Angelotti is amazing. Yeah. But they must feel like if they can put some stuff together here, if that team doesn't take too long to gel, they can really compete with Byron this year. Yeah, you would think so. And Byron's incredible, but I just mean any time there's a manager or a change. Which is why it's interesting that, so they've bought nine guys this summer.

Oldest guy is 25. Right. There's Goetza, who's 24. and then everyone else is 22 or younger. So it's like they're buying guys that are young that they think can help them compete now, but they also know we'll get better and it'll probably leave eventually.

And they buy that many young players knowing that not every young player pans out, but if three of them do. Right. That's why you take a Yanazai on loan. Yeah. It's probably just to see if like, if Tuchel can work some magic, if the Blundus League, it makes more sense for this guy.

Yeah. That works out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. think that you see something, you know, it's been, it's been interesting to watch Liverpool, Ryan and I, with Liverpool fans, I get your, get your bias out. But, you know, Liverpool, I think, has been doing something similar where there were rumors earlier in the summer that they were in,

they were going to be in for Levantowski or they were going to be in for some other big player, you know, and I think that they're doing good work by, I mean, $25 million for that kid from Newcastle, who apparently has, quote, unquote, no heart, according to Newcastle fans. And if Newcastle fans are say you have no heart you got an issue but uh you know i think that that windleum is like a good example of a kid who has just pretty much nowhere but up to go and you can do a lot of different stuff the other thing about what dortman and liverpool do is that where with united we're like kind of a little in the dark as to how they're going to line up and it seems like it's a collection of names that marino is going to have to fit into positions yeah there is no question of how

Dortman or Liverpool are going to play. And so that they can buy guys against a very core philosophy. And that's the same thing that city are doing. Yeah. They know how PEP Guardiola wants to line the team up. And so guys can either get on board, get out. But when they buy guys, they're going to buy this dude from Shalka, right? What was the guy there?

Leroy Sane. Yeah. And it's like he is a perfect cardiola player. Yeah. like Douglas Costa, like whoever. You know, he's, he is like a perfect buy for him. Yeah, well, and that's the thing with sort of Manchester United's issue is that they have had no identity whatsoever since Sir Alex Ferguson left. And their identity with him, like, I don't even know what that was.

It's intangible. How can you have an identity out of like sweeping, attacking football, and trusting in youth? Yeah. That's not like the same thing as we're looking for guys who can counterpress into the wings. Yeah, exactly. But so when you're changing your manager's office. this often you really don't have this like unified like organizational structure you can't be selective with your players you kind of get into this world where you're just buying whoever the

best player is available and trying to fit him in um with pogba i think like i said i think he can fit in to any team um but it's true and then like what you said with liverpool it's interesting with Liverpool because they're sort of like we're talking about Liverpool as this team that is buying young players that are going to help the team and then maybe they'll leave Liverpool for more than they came for. But Liverpool's also just plucking players from teams below them in the Premier League. So there's this like hierarchy where a guy goes to

the Premier League, then he goes to Liverpool and then he goes to maybe Man City or a team like that. The key in in European soccer is Big Bank eats Little Bank. And you just have to be you have to hold on to your players for just long enough to either get the best possible price or win the most amount you possibly can. I mean, Leicester City is going to be,

is being like taken apart, even if Mores stays. Yeah. They've lost Conte. They've lost their director of recruitment to Everton. We'll get on to Everton in a little bit. And they are, and Mores is being, as people are kicking the tires on Marez.

Vardi didn't wind up going, but this is going to be a different team, you know, But they had something where they were like, we're going to get Drinkwater Simpson, Maras Vardy, Huth, Morgan, and Schmichael. And that's going to be the spine of this team that we're going to play pretty much whenever they possibly are healthy. That will be the spine of the team. Yeah. And they won the league.

And they're going to be in Champions League. They do not nearly have probably the depth to play in Champions League and in the Premier League and in domestic cups. Yeah, not yet. But even a team that wins the Premier League, there's a bank coming to call their note in. And that's what you have to do. This happens to Arsenal even. I mean, Arsenal's in the Champions League for the last 15 years, and it happens to them. Yeah, I mean, it's, there's a bank above every team other than basically Real Madrid,

yeah. Barcelona. Yeah, because PSG has to deal with the competition factor. Yeah. PSG basically has to deal with guys getting bored. Yeah, they can essentially, like, I don't know if PSG is ever winning, if Real Madrid and Barsa also want the guy PSG wants. One, I don't know if that player would even want to go to P.SG. I mean, it obviously depends on a lot.

lot of personal reasons behind why you go where you go but like ultimately like Barcelona and Real Madrid are still always I don't have the figures in front of me but like I guarantee you that more people watch the league than league across the world and you know you have to know that yeah that's not even close yeah let's talk a little bit about let's do some fantasy shopping for some teams here okay um so I want to talk about like this idea that we've we'll play transfer matchmaker and we're going to talk about we're going to pair teams with players so why don't you go first We have about two each, and we'll wrap up with this. Okay, my first one is Hamas Rodriguez of Real Madrid, transferring to Arson

Venger's Arsenal. I partially suggest that as a joke because that's sort of been the Arsenal transfer over the past two or three years, which is really not a bad strategy of you've realized that Real Madrid and Barcelona can only play 11 players at one time, so there are going to be players that are good enough to play for those teams, but they get unhappy because they don't play. So they signed Mesodosial from Real Madrid, then they signed Alexi Sanchez from Barcelona. And now it seems like Hamas Rodriguez is the latest sort of victim of that top of La Liga churn. And he's available to buy.

It would be kind of insane if they bought him because they have a thousand attacking midfielders and just throwing another one in. But Arsendanger loved him during the World Cup and he couldn't stop talking about him. So I think it would be the kind of move that would inspire a lot of arson, LOL. That's So Arsenal reaction. Are they keeping Walcott and Chamberlain? Sure. Keep them all.

Keep Wilshire. Keep Cozell. Keep Cazzole. Keep Ramsey. Keep Ozel. Find something for a Wobie to do. And Drew is still the only pure striker you have. Yeah.

Just don't buy a striker because. why would you buy a striker? Because if you bought Lukakis, you might want a league. No, exactly. And this is sort of, it gets at the larger point of Arsenal keeps, they buy guys that seem like the same sort of player.

And is that, I don't know if that's because, maybe because of those are the best values you can find at attacking midfielder. And it's impossible to find good value at striker because the position is such a premium. Right. But then it's like you get into the idea. And he probably feels like he can move Hamas Rodriguez all over the field too,

whereas Drew could only play. at the top of an formation, he probably feels like he, there's, Hamas Rodriguez could play three different positions. Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, Arsenal nearly had Jamie Vardy, which was sort of a, nearly bought him earlier this summer before Vardy sort of.

Which would have been the Peter Check move in the summer. Yeah, before Vardy was like, actually, no, I'm staying at Lester. And I think it would be funny if he was like, I'm staying at Lester, and then all of the other good players on Lester left. And he was just there to fuck around. But that sort of signaled like a departure from their typical buy a younger-ish player and develop him model. But I don't know who the guy is then that you buy, the older striker that you buy.

I mean, I guess Iguyen or someone like that. I mean, before he turned into Satan, Benzimo was a real big Arsenal and a rumor target. The thing is with guys like that now, you know, you wouldn't buy that guy because you're inevitably going to have to give him a long contract. to entice him to come in the last two or three years you're paying a shit little money. Well, the hearty part is, I think, and Ted Knudson talked about this on his podcast, but the detention at Arsenal used to be that they were so good at developing young talent, that they almost didn't have to work. I mean, they could move on Henri or even Fabragas, even if it was against their will,

or cliche or, you know, Sonia, because there were these guys nipping at their heels trying to get in the team from the youth squads. And now, like, Owobie's really good. you know, I mean, he looks really good. Oxley Chamberlain has had some injury problems and doesn't seem to have a natural position. Yeah. Who else is like a Belarusine is a Barcelona product.

I'm trying to think of who Arsenal has brought in in the last two years, three years. That's been like, wow, you can really sell Ozil because this guy's coming. I can't think of anyone. Right. But the thing is, we're sort of in a weird place with this Chinese league

that is sort of willing to spend a lot of money on any name player where it's like, Grasiano-Pelle. Yeah, they bought Grasiano-Pelle who's now, what is he the fourth highest paid player in the world. I think Hulk's probably high up there too and he's another guy got bought. Yeah, so it's like there is a sort of risky move

you can make if you're Arsenal and you buy this guy that you know his contract is going to be like an albatross the last two years and you might be able to offload him to China. So it's sort of like gives you an incentive to take a little bit more of a risk. Well, and that, and speaking of those risks, the interesting thing about transfers this year and the interesting thing about transfer in the Premier League specifically is the sliding scale of where managers are in the arc of their careers at these clubs. So Guardiola, Conte, Marino all need to show results, but all have a little bit more slack than usually they would have.

Klop also has a lot of house money after. the Europe league final. He just got a new contract. Yeah, and everybody just thinks that he's the Beesneys. Yeah. But Venger's gone in a year and a half.

Yeah. Probably. Yeah. And Venger was flirting pretty heavily with the England national team job and was allegedly the number one choice, but the timing just didn't work out. And it would be insane if he just like left Arsenal to coach England.

Like he did the time he didn't work out. Like they like gave him the wrong time to show up the FAA offices. Yeah. It was locked. The door was locked. And so for the last two seasons, I think, there's been a touch to their buys that suggests he's going all in to win one more before he goes.

Yeah. Which is divergent from the everything is all about financial fair play is going to kick in. We have the stadium that's going to generate so much revenue. We have an incredible youth academy that's going to be a talent pipeline. We don't have to sacrifice, break the wage structure of the club and spend all this money. Yeah. And now, obviously, he's getting a little bit jumpier about that, but they still don't pull the trigger on. Every summer there's like a deal that Arsenal needs to make and you're just like, I can't believe they're just not going to do this.

Yeah. And who knows? Maybe Granite Zaka is that guy. For me, Everton is your favorite team. Not my favorite team, but is a new player in a slightly, I think they are jumping up with some new ownership. I believe from Moran are jumping up a little bit in terms of their spending power. and I think Coleman's a good manager. At least he proves so, it's Southampton.

Southampton is just basically like Southampton makes and the world takes. Yeah. I think that they could use a really special attacker right now. And Julian Draxler is a German player who's been linked with Arsenal pretty heavily, but is another guy who is like, is he a striker? Is he a winger? Is he a 10? Yeah.

I would love to see him on Everton. I would love to see him be the focal point of an attack for a Premier League side. I think he's an excellent player. He's still really young, even though he's one of those guys who's been in transfer rumors for like four years, it seems like. Believe he's on Shalka.

You used to play for Wolfsburg. He's on Wolfsburg. He's on Wolfsburg. He's on Wolfsburg. He used to play for Shalka. And I think he would just be an excellent player. Is Delafayu still on Everton? Or did he get moved back?

What happened with him? I believe he's still there. But yeah, you sort of, you saw how I think a lot of Everton fans were frustrated with how little Delafet he played last year because whenever he played he would one it was fun to watch and two he would make shit happen yeah um to use a technical term um i think if you know we saw last year Westham bought demetri piett uh who ended up being he's one of the best attacking midfielers in the world and that's that was sort of like okay this premier league having money thing is

real yeah because they and they were also like you know what he i think he's 27 right 28 28 and they're like you know this is not a guy with a ton of resale value although arguably I think you could probably get like 40 million for him now yeah but they were like we want to be good now we want to we want to flirt with top four we want to make a europe league room we want to make some cup runs we need guides who can and and a guy like piet his value is not immediately apparent when you think but you have to think about like what he does for the players around him and how he makes maybe the younger assets you do have better yeah and it's also like if you see him go there that maybe makes you look at West Ham differently.

But the thing I'm thinking about Draxler is Paya was older so that maybe affects his value. Draxler's 22 and has been talked about as this like huge prospect for a long time. So if like he went to a team like Everton, that would be an even bigger

like holy shit. Yeah and he's also at 22 he's often been like the young guy out like the fifth or sixth option on the German national side and if he was going to go to Bayern he would probably only play it once every three games. But on Everton, much like it is Chalka,

I think he would get a lot of opportunities if you can stay healthy. Who's another transfer you had in your mind? This might show my Liverpool bias, which I think we've masked pretty well so far, especially with the suggestion you just made. I think Christian Benteke to Crystal Palace or insert any other sub top seven Premier League team

would be a great move just because I think he didn't have a bad season of a little. Liverpool, he just didn't fit in with what they did. He still scored goals at the same rate. He scores about a goal every two games. So, you know, half a goal per 90 minutes, which is a very good number for a team that's not in the top five of the Premier League. But he just didn't fit in the system that Klopp wants to play.

He doesn't press and he sort of needs people to just feed him the ball. So I think it's like it's a good situation for a team to find a guy who his value is sort of accidentally depressed and you can get him for the rumors are like 25 million which is a lot of money like I couldn't hold that much money in my arms but compared to like what every other striker is going for in the world and he's what 23 24 yeah a proven guy who's scored a bunch of nearly like to get him for that price is sort of a steal this is where the passion of certain teams kind of works against them sometimes because I I just know from listening to the excellent Anfield rap podcast all year.

Liverpool fans think Christian Bentecchi is a bum. And it's hard to foist a bum onto another team. You have to convince Alan Pardue that this guy is going to be a 20-goal score for you. And it's difficult, too. The other thing that's funny is that there's so many weird little rivalries within the Premier League that Liverpool can't buy Andrew Herrera. And Arsenal is not going to buy Eric Dyer. I mean, they would never be able to buy Eric Dyer,

even though technically I bet they could go and offer $60 million for them if they wanted to. But that would never happen. And it's funny how sometimes fan bases or allegiances or rivalries can work against these transfers. Yeah, and it's sort of just, well, one, it talks about how Liverpool kind of doesn't have any leverage with their bent tech negotiations because, like, everyone knows he's not going to play at all. Right.

But it also sort of highlights how so much goes into like every transfer that we can never like look like it's so easy to look at a transfer and be like oh this player went for 10 million but then this other guy went for eight and he's so much better why than they just buy by him it's like every deal there's so much that goes into it that you can't really just compare yeah it's length of contract it's nationality it's international it's all sorts of stuff yeah my other one my last one is um what to do what eventus should do with their 100 million i would love to see them get tony cruz from real madrid i don't think that's going to happen How much is he worth, according to his brother?

I think it's way more than Pagba, right? Juventis has just had a really great history of having wonderful central midfielders going back to Platney, I'm sure, before them, but Pierlo, Pagba. It would just be strange for them not to have, like, an expert in the middle of the park. I don't know why, but I just find, like, the Juvenis team, like the colors and the stadium and the history of the team to be, like, maybe not romantic, but really enigmatic. and I think Cruz would be an incredible inheritor of that legacy of like cultured midfielders. Yeah. He's one of my favorite players to watch. He is a bit of a dickhead, but I do think that he would fit in on that, on that

Juventus team. And I just think that it's going to be funny because like after all the buying and selling and moving around, I just have a feeling Juventis will probably be in and around the final four of the Champions League again next season. I mean, as long as they can keep Benucci. They always are. They're almost like Dortmund. but at a higher level.

Somehow it's like they're sort of the team that everyone looks at and they just now. How did you guys get DeBala? Yeah. Like the difference between them and Dortmund is like Juventus gets someone like Sammy Kadira or Carlos Tevez for cheap because they know that they're going to, they're going to like, they're either out of contract so you just have to pay for their contract or whatever, for whatever reason their values a little lower than it should be. Or for Juventus, like they're fighting for the to win the Champions League.

so like an older Tevez is worth more to them. Yeah. They are, his, is to another team. So they mix that in with, like, buying DeBala, who's, like, looks like this, the next young, great striker and nailing every purchase they made. Like, they bought Pionage from Roma, who's a very good center midfielder. They just got Benadia from Bayern Munich, who, like, most people think is good. I still don't know how to rate centerbacks, despite watching as much soccer as I do.

That's really hard. Yeah. It's a lot of it is based on the defensive midfiel. Yeah. So it is like it's it'll be sort of a bummer to see Pogbel leave Eventus just because he seems to like have like an identity with that team. I'm excited to watch more of him though. Yeah, exactly. And like have him be like more of a present personality.

And I'm glad he's not going to Real or Barza. Yeah, I agree. It's terrible that he's going to Manchester United. Let's not skirt by that. But it'll, it's going to be a lot of fun to see what they do with the money just because they're so smart with it. and they always seem to do the right thing. So that'll be really interesting to watch Playout. All right, Ryan and I will be back probably with another transfer pub

before the beginning of the Premier League season, and then we'll probably do a Premier League preview in early August, maybe after the Community Shield, because we'll have to devote all of our attention to the Community Shield. Until then, I'm Chris Ryan for Ryan O'Hanlon. Thanks for listening.