He bothers me because he's absolutely, 100% useless for us. The question should be "why keep him and why did we sign him in the first place?"

His salary is minimal, but it's an extra that we shouldn't be paying to begin with as he's not needed. And it might be minimal compared to the extravagant figures we pay our players but I guarantee you that his salary is probably equivalent to that of what other smaller teams in the league are paying their best players.

And people wonder why we still continually win the salary competition, even while we're not even competing for CL places


@ Jack I think Essien will fit better than De Jong in the double pivot

Useless as every 4th keeper pick. Yet teams do have 4 keepers in their roster.

Number 15?

Hmmm (IMG:style_emoticons/default/innocent.gif)

Sadly, she is right, IMHO

Negative people look at things negatively. I think Italian football is in a transitional period, not in a decaying state. It has always been a unique league and will remain so.

But we need a 3rd GK, and who's a better fit than Coppola? The 3rd GK is always useless anyway. Remember Fiori?

A 3rd keeper? Sure. We have 4 atm though. That's too much in an already inflated squad.

And really if we do manage to get Perin and someone else as second choice or stick with Amelia then that should be decent enough, as first and second choices.

It all depends on what will happen with Gabriel in the summer, if he goes then sure, keep Coppola, if we plan on keeping him than Coppola is simply not needed

And really I'd rather give the chance to a promising youth kid than Coppola as third choice

Amelia is too awful as 2nd choice, and too expensive as 3rd. He should leave. Gabriel staying as 2nd choice rest of season got my preference. It's only a half year, and Abbiati is often injured anyway. In Summer focus can be put on a new first goalkeeper.

I'm talking about next season. New GK, Gabriel and Coppola.

I don't think it's just about being positive or negative at all. Transitional periods lead you into decline or growth. I think we all know where Serie A is rapidly headed.


Sometimes you've gotta give up man (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

If Abbiati stays, Coppola and Amelia should be sold (or loaned out at least). If Amelia stays, Abbiati could retire and Coppola should be sold. Anyway, it's really peripheral.

The important thing is to clean up the players that cost you money but don't bring any quality. I wouldn't target the low earners, I'd rather we get rid of Birsa, Muntari, Nocerino and Robinho especially. I'd also consider Mexes if we have someone real good (and younger) in plan.

Why? Anything special about that number?

Me too, we don't know for a fact that Amelia is going or if Abbiati is retiring, or even if we're selling Gabriel. There are a lot of question marks but what is very important is that we need to bring someone in who'll be first choice, 2nd and 3rd are mostly irrelevant as long as they don't earn too much.

But Coppola is 4th and I really can't see him as 3rd choice next season either, when was the last time he even played?

I'd rather we make a clean sweep of all the keepers we have this summer, bring in Perin and maybe even Agazzi if he's free and promote a youth player as 3rd choice


Those are all hypotheticals, but my main point was mostly that we don't need a 4th choice, that's just overkill and we only brought Coppola in as the usual panic transfer when Abbiati got injured, just like we did with Silvestre.

Yes, it's important to remove the high earners from the roster who don't bring anything to the table, but as I said, Copolla is still earning a wage for absolutely nothing and he's still an extra body that is not needed. So why keep him?

We have an agreement with Napoli for Armero. We just need to convince Constant to go the other way.

Link

Armero? Hm... We already have MDS and Urby on the left. Maybe Seedorf is planning on playing him upfront?

He's better than Constant but it's still within the same waters of average. I think it's mostly as a FB cover for Abate and DS.

Playing him as a winger with the type of game we play wouldn't make much sense as he's only useful when counterattacking and he has acres of space to run in

Still I personally feel that it doesn't make much sense to go after another left footed wingback/LB when we already have Urby there as cover, what we really need is someone who can cover for Abate so we don't have to keep shifting DS from his position each time Abate isn't available