The "January" Transfer Window 20/21 season

[CHAPELALLMAN]

Too simplistic a view. What you also have to consider is the players in those relative squads. Wilko's Leeds side was predominantly experienced pros who had been around the block a bit. As such they would be less tolerant of a jumped up primadona like Cantona. Even if you consider the youthful Batty he was a tough no nonsense Yorkshireman who wouldn't really be enamoured with a sulky Frenchman poncing around. We'd also won the title predominantly without Cantona yet even many Leeds fans seem to credit it all to Cantona and didn't give the rest of the team the praise they deserved. I think a lot of players at Leeds probably resented him so it boiled down to do you replace the bulk of the first team or sell Cantona?

At Man U the squad was different. You had flair youngsters like Giggs and Sharpe in the side who would have been wowed by Cantona's tricks in training. You also had the fact they had bottled the title the season before so any help would be welcomed with open arms. It was a squad that welcomed him with open arms instead of a squad who wanted rid of him.

I don't know - the Man U squad of that era was packed with battle-hardened, experienced pros who had been around the block ; Robson, Hughes, Bruce, McClair etc. I'm sure that Robson ( as one of the greatest England captains ever, and with 90 caps ) would have made his feelings known if he thought that Cantona was just ' poncing around ' and being sulky. We also had Speed who was a relative youngster at the time - just like Batty. I'm sure he was in awe sometimes at what Cantona could do in training.

Talk about resentment from the Leeds players towards Cantona is pure speculation. Funny that you specifically mentioned Batty - if you remember Batty and Cantona were sat right next to each other on a sofa (together with Chapman and McAllister ) watching on tv the game which confirmed the title win.

I agree that Cantona only played a small part in the title victory, however a hat-trick in the 1992 Charity Shield promised that great things lay ahead. He also scored another hat-trick against Spurs in the 1992-3 season and ended up with 6 goals in 13 games in the league - not exactly shabby statistics. It was pretty obvious by that stage that Cantona was a special talent.

I think there were some cultural misunderstandings between him and Wilko - for example going straight to the dressing room after being substituted was normal practice in French football, but Wilko interpreted it as being disrespectful to the team. Those two just couldn't see eye to eye in the end. Men with pretty strong egos do tend to clash if they have to work together.

At the end of the day we sold him to the club which we had just pipped to the title the previous season, and for a risible fee as well. I've never entirely trusted our transfer dealings ever since that time.

[Gandalf]

Gazetta dello Sport linking us with Nahitan Nandez. We were linked last year but didn't go up obviously. He moved from Boca Juniors last year to Caligari last summer, who are owned by...... Cellino.

Cellino owns Brescia not Cagliari.

[Carrick Dave]

Also for some strange reason we seem to think we can get Benrahma for £12-15mil which in todays daft market would be really good business but also sounds like us vastly underestimating the inflated domestic market.

Aside from that PH says he hasnt heard any significant movement transfer wise including with Benrahma and White, so not expecting any deals in the next dew days.

Two things here, slightly contradictory -

I don't think we should hang about for Ben much longer and find he stays at Brighton in the end leaving us scrambling for cover, as in Adams/JKA debacle last time round.

However, from previous comments, Orta appears to feel that fees generally will fall significantly in the wake of the virus impact, so paying top dollar in the early part of the window might leave you ending up looking foolish in a month's time. Maybe his low valuation of Benrahma reflects this uncertainty?

As always, a player is worth what someone is willing to pay at a specific time - do Leeds pile in and pay over the odds to get players in with a month to drill them, or hold off till October and possibly pay a lot less?

I wonder what Bielsa's take is, given the unusual circumstances?

[SG90]

Brentford will need money to pay wages, so the longer it goes on, the more desperate they'll get and his price will fall.

[1964white]

Willian gone to Arsenal on a free

[Cjay]

Two things here, slightly contradictory -

I don't think we should hang about for Ben much longer and find he stays at Brighton in the end leaving us scrambling for cover, as in Adams/JKA debacle last time round.

However, from previous comments, Orta appears to feel that fees generally will fall significantly in the wake of the virus impact, so paying top dollar in the early part of the window might leave you ending up looking foolish in a month's time. Maybe his low valuation of Benrahma reflects this uncertainty?

As always, a player is worth what someone is willing to pay at a specific time - do Leeds pile in and pay over the odds to get players in with a month to drill them, or hold off till October and possibly pay a lot less?

I wonder what Bielsa's take is, given the unusual circumstances?

It does make you wonder what MB thinks, despite his loyalty he has never denied that he would take new players, he said before he would take 5 new players if they were better then what we had (something like that).

Its not a case of not wanting them, he just doesnt want any old player.

Do we wait until the last week of the window and hope to get some players cheaper? Not sure we dare.

We mess this up and we could be in real trouble. Season would already be under way by then, if we have gotten off to a poor start and then fail with a transfer gamble that could be us fighting an uphill battle already.

I think Orta may he right, transfer fees will drop. Problem is for the players we seem to be after, other clubs would be willing to take a smaller drop to get them in faster.

And unless the player arrives in tip top shape with an already telepathic understanding of BielsaBall he wouldn't get a start for weeks, maybe months. I think we have to bite the bullet because the consequences of waiting to long could cost as much more, relegation.

Or we just go foreign as ive already said, there are player outside of this tiny island. Good players, as good and better then we have here. Go get them, cheaper.

[Cjay]

Sky Sports reporting that both Radz and Orta have been out of the country the last few weeks looking at attacking targets.

We want a striker and possibly a winger or an attacking midfielder.

This does tally with facts.

Despite Phil always playing down foreign links Radz himself said he was out of the country meeting a potential target.

The fee involved with Jonathan David would probably be a negotiation Radz would want to do himself for example.

Also Orta was spotted at Manchester airport departures a while back.

Its interesting, the line from the club seems to be that they want domestic and yet a lot of foreign targets are getting named and we know Radz and probably Orta have been out of the country recently.

[SG90]

https://throughitalltogether.sbnation.c ... ier-league

Jean-Paul Boetius from Mainz according to Bild.

[SG90]

Sky Sports reporting that both Radz and Orta have been out of the country the last few weeks looking at attacking targets.

We want a striker and possibly a winger or an attacking midfielder.

This does tally with facts.

Despite Phil always playing down foreign links Radz himself said he was out of the country meeting a potential target.

The fee involved with Jonathan David would probably be a negotiation Radz would want to do himself for example.

Also Orta was spotted at Manchester airport departures a while back.

Its interesting, the line from the club seems to be that they want domestic and yet a lot of foreign targets are getting named and we know Radz and probably Orta have been out of the country recently.

Focusing only on the Championship is incredibly short sighted. You only end up overpaying for limited talent. No player in the Championship is worth £20m.

Despite our supposed focus on domestic, we've still signed Casilla, Meslier, JKA from abroad. I think it's a smokescreen so we're linked with players we don't actually want.

[weasel]

Whilst it would in an ideal world be better to get the signings in quickly and integrated I still would expect Bielsa to start with nearly the same team as last season and then introduce the new signings gradually - the only exception being if it was a new player in at a position where we needed someone new as a starter and that would only be the case if Ben White didn't sign.

As such if a player's fee drops £5m to £10m because we wait a month then it makes sense to go down that route and then let Bielsa integrate them as he sees fit. With Benhrama it has already been mentioned that Brentford will need to pay wages and they will have very little income coming in - only the paltry tv money. Factor in that they will have been paying wages with no income for the last few months too and they are in a very weak position to try to sell high. Benhrama may be a decent player but how many premiership teams that have supposedly been linked with him would be throwing him into their first team straightaway? Probably none or at most a couple. As such they won't get the bidding war they want and prem clubs can wait as they have the big tv money.

From what we heard heard so far clubs seem to think they can ask a fortune and we are right to walk away from deals that don't make sense.

[John in Louisiana]

Most top managers are very strong willed, and often quite authoritarian. Wilko and Bielsa are quite similar in their approach - demanding total compliance and obedience from their players, and working to a very rigid system without room for much flexibility. Both demand or demanded that players be at a particularly high level of fitness - Wilko would have the players regularly doing cross country runs. Wilko transformed a mediocre side very quickly, as has Bielsa. Revie was slightly different, in that he saw the players and staff at the club more as one big family, and he was much closer personally to the players than either Wilko or Bielsa have ever been. Wilko and Bielsa have also have in common an unusually high degree of attention to detail and meticulous planning to the point of OCD. Wilko was always reading and writing notes during matches.

Wilko and Cantona didn't really get on, as Cantona was more of a free spirited type of player, whereas Wilko wanted players who would follow his every instruction, and who would fit exactly within his system of play. In the end they clashed badly, and Wilko wanted shot of him. He was sold for a paltry and ridiculous 1.2m to you-know-who, and the rest is history.

What is interesting is that another very authoritarian manager - Alex Ferguson, adapted his interpersonal approach when dealing with Cantona. He gave him far more slack than the other players because he recognised his very special abilities. Clearly the style of play suited Cantona more than it did under Wilko's management, and he flourished as a player. Even when Cantona did his kung fu kick and got a long ban, Ferguson stood by him and didn't even criticise him in public. He was integrated back into the team when he came back and he played better than ever thereafter.

Perhaps Bielsa can learn something from the time that Wilko was manager - they are very similar in their approach and in their personalities, but Wilko learnt the hard way that sometimes there has to be a degree of flexibility in one's approach. Even today some remember him more as the fool who sold Cantona for just over a million quid rather thah the brilliant manager who won the 1992 title for Leeds.

Wlko's fortunes are also a bit of a cautionary tale for Bielsa - one reason why I am not getting too caught up in the current manic euphoria, and why I don't think that Bielsa quite walks on water yet. When Wilko took over the club had endured a diabolical 6 or 7 years in the old second division. He took over with the side close to the bottom of division 2 yet he transformed them within a year or two into division 2 champions. In the first year back in the top tier they finished an amazing 4th, and then - staggeringly - 1st division champions a year later. The change in fortunes was incredible. Yet the next season they were nearly relegated, and they didn't win a single away game all season. A few seasons later Wilko was sacked - unthinkable back in 1992.

Watching the adulation directed towards Bielsa now, I can't help wondering what the reaction would be had the fans just witnessed what Wilko had achieved by May 1992 in such a short time. Wilko probably only got a fraction of the adulation which Bielsa is now enjoying. The cautionary tale for Bielsa is that fortunes at the club can change very quickly for managers, and today's cheers can become tomorrow's jeers rather quickly.

Excellent post and I get your point.

There is, however, a big difference in degree with Pontus' transgression. It's one thing to want to be a more free-wheeling sort of player than the manager would like. It's another thing entirely to perpetrate a public, on the field mutiny.

As someone who was a pretty good, but not outstanding, player in his day, I resented the coaches who had two sets of rules; one for the team and another for the stars. I played alongside two players who went on to be NCAA All-Americans and play in the NASL, and they got away with all sorts of things that would have seen the rest of us on the squad relegated to the bench (if not thrown off the team entirely). I resented the treatment they received (as did most others on the team). Won a 16-year age group national title (and later a state high school championship) that we never would have won without those two, and they were two great guys. I didn't resent them; I resented the coach.

Who am I to argue with Ferguson's record? Who is even Bielsa? But we have a team full of players who would run through a brick wall for Bielsa and we don't have the sort of transcendent player who might get special treatment. But the best players - the ones who are not only great talents but also make those around them better - don't require special treatment. They put side before self and trust the manager to determine what's best for the side. Give me a team full of Bremners or Charltons any day.

[SG90]

Blunts spending £18.5m on Ramsdale. I think that's more in desperation than a sign that prices will stay that high this year.

[SG90]

New name linked is Arthur Cabral from Basel.

[Cjay]

New name linked is Arthur Cabral from Basel.

Never heard of him.

Striker?

[SG90]

Never heard of him.

Striker?

Yep. 22-year-old Brazilian. Brazilian media said we've bid £16m.

https://www.transfermarkt.com/arthur-ca ... ler/390638

Basel always seen to find class players, so he should be good. He's actually only on loan at Basel, plays for Palmeiras. Edit: Basel bought him on a permanent basis for 4.4m wow.

[SG90]

One for you CJay
On the basis of that overhead on 54 secs, I've decided he's going to be better than Luis Ronaldo. Sign him up.

[Cjay]

One for you CJay
On the basis of that overhead on 54 secs, I've decided he's going to be better than Luis Ronaldo. Sign him up.

Thanks
Looks decent, have to take the league in to account but 18 goals and 6 assists in just 2546 minutes, couple in Europa League to.

Id take him

May need to lose some timber but reminds me of Mark Viduka

[Richard]

Thanks
Looks decent, have to take the league in to account but 18 goals and 6 assists in just 2546 minutes, couple in Europa League to.

Id take him

May need to lose some timber but reminds me of Mark Viduka

Sadly this is the type of gamble I think we are going to have to go for and hope it doesn’t take too long for him to settle in. New country, language barriers for him here in the UK, will he settle and the intensity of Bielsa football not to mention the new stress Covid 19 has placed upon everyone and finally how will he find the English game. I can’t seem him featuring for the first couple of months.

I’d have preferred to hear we’d got someone like Michy Batshuayi who has already worked with Bielsa, is settled in the UK and has experience of the PL but like I said, I feel the likes of signing an Arthur Cabral type player more realistic

[Scoobychief]

If these fake news are anything to go by, but if this is true i saw him play the other night in europa and he looks pretty good strong direct and a great fit for us up front, and like i say if true 20m is a steal, would be worth double than in 2022. but going by these fake news and the pile of players we have been linked with if it were all true we would be champions in 2021. but hoping this could be the one.

[Richard]

If these fake news are anything to go by, but if this is true i saw him play the other night in europa and he looks pretty good strong direct and a great fit for us up front, and like i say if true 20m is a steal, would be worth double than in 2022. but going by these fake news and the pile of players we have been linked with if it were all true we would be champions in 2021. but hoping this could be the one.

Being discussed in the transfer thread mate