Martin Alvito
Player Valuation: £50m
An analogy occurred to me:
Think of all the times that you've seen a superb pair of center backs broken up. Case in point: Puyol and Pique. Literally won all the things together. Pique was the second banana, and when Puyol hung it up Barca struggled to find a pairing that worked. (Ramos and Pique blanked the knockout stage of Euro 2012 for Spain, and that pairing seemed to work fine for quite a while.)
Gomes and Gana worked well together, at least when I watched. They covered for one another's shortcomings. We failed to replace Gana, and Gomes then did not look as good pre-injury. He unsurprisingly looked terrible after being rushed back.
I think Gomes (assuming a full recovery) is a good player under the right conditions - he needs someone with a motor next to him. Bringing in Allan is basically a statement that Carlo doesn't think a Hojbjerg or Doucoure next to him would be enough, and he may well be right about that.
But I do think it's overly harsh to label Gomes "poor". He contributed under the right setup, but if we can't provide that setup then all parties may be made better off if we sell him to a team that can.
Think of all the times that you've seen a superb pair of center backs broken up. Case in point: Puyol and Pique. Literally won all the things together. Pique was the second banana, and when Puyol hung it up Barca struggled to find a pairing that worked. (Ramos and Pique blanked the knockout stage of Euro 2012 for Spain, and that pairing seemed to work fine for quite a while.)
Gomes and Gana worked well together, at least when I watched. They covered for one another's shortcomings. We failed to replace Gana, and Gomes then did not look as good pre-injury. He unsurprisingly looked terrible after being rushed back.
I think Gomes (assuming a full recovery) is a good player under the right conditions - he needs someone with a motor next to him. Bringing in Allan is basically a statement that Carlo doesn't think a Hojbjerg or Doucoure next to him would be enough, and he may well be right about that.
But I do think it's overly harsh to label Gomes "poor". He contributed under the right setup, but if we can't provide that setup then all parties may be made better off if we sell him to a team that can.
