[Danny]

Never quite sure where to start a thread so 'other' always seems best.

Just wanted to get general opinion from the board as to your feelings on our summer recruits so far - do you guys think we're in the right direction?

Personally I know little of Musacchio, but as Han says, a vital cog in Spain's second best defence last season has to be a decent recruit.

Kessie seems like the powerful box to box dynamic midfielder we've lacked in a long time - while Jack sort of fills that role, he's much more of an attacking midfielder really, so Kessie is a great piece of business.

Rodriguez is a great signing - comes from a great stable, a good age, and a massive upgrade over the garbage of De Sciglio.

Then there's Silva. Meh, I'm not blown away by his record, or his attitude. He's only young, true, but we've spent a lot of money on a player who appears combustible and who doesn't have a good scoring record in a weaker league than Serie A. I defer judgement on this one but it's not a signing I'm enthralled by.

Last but not least Borini. A sh*t signing, plain and simple. Not even good enough to be a squad player, I have no idea what he's doing here.

But I can pick it up with Calhanoglu - we appear close to this one, and from what I know of him, which is not a lot in truth, he's a top class attacking midfielder who would be such an upgrade to what we have.

Overall? I'm cautiously pleased. We've signed a lot of very good players and one or two I'm a little wary of. I wanted this done in 2011, but it's better late than never. Unfortunately rather than, as it would have been in 2011, adding fine players to a world class squad, we're rebuilding really from scratch.

But for me, it appears to be closer to going to Milan as we should be rather than in a poor direction.

7/10.

13/7/17 update:

We've now got Conti, Biglia and Bonucci. A RB, a CM, and a world class CB.

Suddenly we have a top four team. We now have a top four team. Yes. I am not going to declare a Scudetto challenge but we're much closer to one than we were a few days ago. This is now looking like a Milan level team.

This post has been edited by Danny: Jul 13 2017, 10:37 PM

[X-Offender]

You simply have to take into account the complete lack of game time he's had this season

We're not talking about a striker who was continuously started and then dropped because he couldn't score. Aside from the EL, his minutes mostly came from sub appearances late in games. He's rarely started games in the league

You can't consider him a let down because he's simply haven't had the time to be all that disappointing on the pitch

I never considered him as such. My opinion relates solely to the time he has been played, and how much he has delivered during those minutes. Be it goals, assists, performance, grit, you name it. He has shown nothing.

Surely, he's young, new league and all that stuff. But for how much he has delivered, he's been nothing but a failure. Hopefully he starts picking his form after these last two games and Gattuso starts playing him more.

Balotelli is available for free next summer. Who of you would take him on again? I'd personally consider it if there is no hope of getting a top notch finisher

I think I would. We can't continue playing with Kalinic and Cutrone.

I think our problems have been more deep rooted then simply not having a deadly finisher.

Bacca was close to getting there his first season while he was horrible last season, the problems generally tend to come from the fact that we have a very sterile midfield which doesn't create enough chances for our forwards.

I never said our problems stem from the lack of a top striker, but a top striker sure as hell would have eased things around.

[han2503]

I never considered him as such. My opinion relates solely to the time he has been played, and how much he has delivered during those minutes. Be it goals, assists, performance, grit, you name it. He has shown nothing.

Surely, he's young, new league and all that stuff. But for how much he has delivered, he's been nothing but a failure. Hopefully he starts picking his form after these last two games and Gattuso starts playing him more.



I think I would. We can't continue playing with Kalinic and Cutrone.



I never said our problems stem from the lack of a top striker, but a top striker sure as hell would have eased things around.

But all the factors you mentioned were always going to be a hurdle for Silva to get past, add to that time to learn the language as well and it was always going to take time. Maybe the problem was that we expected too much from him because of what we paid for him

Kalinic is going to be shipped out this summer, it's inevitable at this point. We defo need someone with serious experience and capable of scoring 20+ goals next season. Cavani, Balotelli, Immobile and Belotti are the only names that spring to mind for me which are realistic for us.


Problem is, unless you have someone like Ibra, who can create stuff for himself, any striker is going to have a bit of a difficult time in this team because we tend to be too sterile and slow on the ball