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Rodrigo Bentancur

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That reminds me of my brother-in-law who was a Liverpool fan all through his youth and teens, and then switched to Utd when he was an adult. And he is not some casual fan.He was an underage international himself and really has no excuses for such behavior. So I always remind him about this when he gets a bit lairy.
 
And a player we can't sign because he's signing for that amount for a bigger club...



So not a fan of Bentancur then?
I always try to be optimistic about anyone we sign, at least until I’ve seen them play a few times myself and moreso the less I’ve seen of them!

My slightly tongue in cheek remark was about the limitations of us signing players from the dof former club who are surplus to their requirements.
I’ve actually spent a lot to time in the last couple of days defending the difficulty any club has dealing in January and in our particular case being attractive enough to avoid being gazumped by CL regulars for any top level player.

So I’m grateful for us to have 2 or 3 new bodies to replace squad members who are not being used at all and we can judge their / Paratici’s effectiveness at the end of the season.
 
I always try to be optimistic about anyone we sign, at least until I’ve seen them play a few times myself and moreso the less I’ve seen of them!

My slightly tongue in cheek remark was about the limitations of us signing players from the dof former club who are surplus to their requirements.
I’ve actually spent a lot to time in the last couple of days defending the difficulty any club has dealing in January and in our particular case being attractive enough to avoid being gazumped by CL regulars for any top level player.

So I’m grateful for us to have 2 or 3 new bodies to replace squad members who are not being used at all and we can judge their / Paratici’s effectiveness at the end of the season.

I applaud the positives.

Where we sign players from is of little importance to me. If they're good enough and a good fit that's all that matters.

Bentancur seems like a good fit.
 
Well I say feeder, I mean the only club who will deal with us as we take care of their cast offs so they can improve their squad. Kind of a ‘special relationship’

Bit like how we signed PSG cast offs.

I love Tottenham but I just don't like us. Anyone we sign will turn out crap.
 
Quite a good thread on Twitter where a Uraguyan Spurs fan gives a summary of the player. Spoiler: He said he’s not better than Hojbjerg or Skipp. Similar style to Winks.

Do you have a link to the thread? Doesn't sound like we've made the signing of a century here, but that's exactly why I'm cautiously optimistic. Anyone we're even remotely excited about goes on to do nothing for us. :p
 
Did we just swoop in at the last minute and steal a target from under the noses of much better run club Aston Villa?

Well as we all know a club is only interested in a player as long as the oldest link and talks only start when the rumours ramp up so it certainly looks like we've done a Liverpool/Diaz on this one
 
He's alright. I doubt he'll start regularly over Hojbjerg - the two are about as limited as each other.

But he is very, very good at one specific aspect - ball-winning, where he regularly scores in the 90th to 95th percentile for Serie A players as a whole. Ditto with pressures and interceptions.

He's never evolved to be more than a ball-winner, and if you think Skipp-Hojbjerg is a limited pairing, Bentancur-Hojbjerg will make you gouge your eyes out - Allegri has highlighted in the past that his stagnation in recent years is because Juve asked Bentancur to be a deep-lying distributor, which he is not and will never be.

But he can be an able rotation option for Hojbjerg in a way that I think Skipp can't, yet - and if we ever go into a game like Chelsea again where we want to set our stall out with 8 defenders, a Bentancur-Hojbjerg midfield will certainly be difficult to play through. For both sides, though - makes me think of the days of having the likes of Freund in midfield, able battlers who are a bit crap everywhere else.

To be honest, we're following an approach with him and Kulusevski that I'm not all that convinced works for us - we're trying to improve our 'floor', not our 'ceiling'. People saying we 'snatched him' from Aston Villa are deluding themselves a bit, imo, because Villa have already improved their ceiling signing Coutinho and Digne - relative to us, their squad quality has moved up significantly, while with Bentancur and Kulusevski, our gains will probably be more marginal.

In essence, we're trying to bring the yawning gaps in our squad up to about average. Kulusevski and Bentancur are that type of player - they offer us average options, imo, which are still marginally better than what we used to have (i.e, Winks and Alli, who is the player I think most closely resembles Kulusevski in play style based on what I've seen).

Whether that approach works or just fills the squad with average players is open to interpretation. But if we use them in a specific ways (bentancur as a rotation option for Hojbjerg, Kulusevski as one of the attacking midfield options out of him, Son, Lucas and Bergwijn), they will probably be reliable players.
 
He's alright. I doubt he'll start regularly over Hojbjerg - the two are about as limited as each other.

But he is very, very good at one specific aspect - ball-winning, where he regularly scores in the 90th to 95th percentile for Serie A players as a whole. Ditto with pressures and interceptions.

He's never evolved to be more than a ball-winner, and if you think Skipp-Hojbjerg is a limited pairing, Bentancur-Hojbjerg will make you gouge your eyes out - Allegri has highlighted in the past that his stagnation in recent years is because Juve asked Bentancur to be a deep-lying distributor, which he is not and will never be.

But he can be an able rotation option for Hojbjerg in a way that I think Skipp can't, yet - and if we ever go into a game like Chelsea again where we want to set our stall out with 8 defenders, a Bentancur-Hojbjerg midfield will certainly be difficult to play through. For both sides, though - makes me think of the days of having the likes of Freund in midfield, able battlers who are a bit crap everywhere else.

To be honest, we're following an approach with him and Kulusevski that I'm not all that convinced works for us - we're trying to improve our 'floor', not our 'ceiling'. People saying we 'snatched him' from Aston Villa are deluding themselves a bit, imo, because Villa have already improved their ceiling signing Coutinho and Digne - relative to us, their squad quality has moved up significantly, while with Bentancur and Kulusevski, our gains will probably be more marginal.

In essence, we're trying to bring the yawning gaps in our squad up to about average. Kulusevski and Bentancur are that type of player - they offer us average options, imo, which are still marginally better than what we used to have (i.e, Winks and Alli, who is the player I think most closely resembles Kulusevski in play style based on what I've seen).

Whether that approach works or just fills the squad with average players is open to interpretation. But if we use them in a specific ways (bentancur as a rotation option for Hojbjerg, Kulusevski as one of the attacking midfield options out of him, Son, Lucas and Bergwijn), they will probably be reliable players.

Cheers for posting with such well reasoned arguments.

If Bentancur is that average on the ball how was he ever thought of as an option for a deep distributor at a big club like Juventus? From what I've seen/read he's a bit better as a passer than you make it sound. Not a deep playmaker, but someone well capable of good progressive passing?

As for the strategy, I agree with your overall point. Raising the floor will only get us so far, but as part of a strategy I think that's fine.

I think that's perhaps a bit harsh particularly on Kulusevski who is clearly talented and at 21 has quite a bit of room to grow.

I also think that the overall quality of a player is less important than how they fit into our style and approach. Round pegs and all that.

A player that on overall quality is not much more than a floor raiser can be much more if they fit what the team and manager needs.

But yeah, to really push on you probably need someone special. If that's not one of these lads let's hope we get someone like that in the summer.
 
Cheers for posting with such well reasoned arguments.

If Bentancur is that average on the ball how was he ever thought of as an option for a deep distributor at a big club like Juventus? From what I've seen/read he's a bit better as a passer than you make it sound. Not a deep playmaker, but someone well capable of good progressive passing?

As for the strategy, I agree with your overall point. Raising the floor will only get us so far, but as part of a strategy I think that's fine.

I think that's perhaps a bit harsh particularly on Kulusevski who is clearly talented and at 21 has quite a bit of room to grow.

I also think that the overall quality of a player is less important than how they fit into our style and approach. Round pegs and all that.

A player that on overall quality is not much more than a floor raiser can be much more if they fit what the team and manager needs.

But yeah, to really push on you probably need someone special. If that's not one of these lads let's hope we get someone like that in the summer.

Considering how much work our squad needs I don't think the order in which the pieces of the puzzle are together is of great importance at the moment .
 
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