Using Mourinho's philosophy of having a core 24 man squad and out of boredom I have decided to do a preliminary core 24 man squad for Koeman's upcoming season
Goalkeepers (2):
Stekelenburg
Robles
Right Backs (1):
Coleman
Centre Backs (3):
Jagielka
Mori
Williams
Left Backs (2):
Baines
Oviedo
Centre Midfielders (4):
Gibson
McCarthy
Barry
Gueye
Cleverley
Attacking Midfielders (1):
Barkley
Right Wingers (2):
Deulofeu
Lennon
Left Wingers (1):
Mirallas
Strikers (3):
Kone
Lukaku
Tarashaj
Total: 20
Not included:
Niasse, McGeady, Besic, Garbutt and Galloway
Niasse, McGeady and Garbutt do not have squad numbers
Galloway is likely to go out on loan
Besic is out for at least 6 months, no point registering him as a player given that he won't play any part of the first half of the season. If he does recover from his injury we can re-register him later on in January, opens up another squad spot for at least 6 months.
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Koeman currently has 20 first team players to choose from plus Davies, Browning, Dowell, Holgate and Pennington (when he recovers from his current injury)
Most of these younger players may be loaned out however it's clear from the squad depth that we have, that we need at least another 4 first team players to even reach 24. The squad is weak at the moment especially if the current 20 includes the likes of Kone, Tarashaj, Gibson, Oviedo and 2 backup keepers. Tarashaj is unknown at the moment, he may turn out to be quality, he may not.
The clear areas we need to strengthen are:
1 - A top quality keeper who will be our number 1 for the next 5 years at least
2 - A right back to cover coleman if he gets injured
3 - A centre back - Koeman says he needs at least 4 centre backs
4 - A striker - if Lukaku suffers a real bad injury we are screwed
5 - A creative midfielder - we have no real quality in the centre of mid in terms of creating goals or linking up play - all our midfielders are simply workhorses
6 - A left winger - Mirallas is our only option down that wing at the moment unless you switch lennon and deulofeu over but its lacking any real quality on the left wing
who could we bring in to sort this out?
1 - Begovic
2 - ?
3 - Kone
4 - Slimani
5 - Mata
6 - Bolasie
If Kone is 20 mil, Begovic - 15 mil, Mata - 25 mil, Bolasie - 25 mil and Slimani 25 mil then taking into account the 100 mil we were promised plus 40 mil from stones after Burnley's cut that's £140 mil we have to spend. We have already spent around 17 million on players which means that there is another 123 mil left.
Take into account the fee's i mentioned above those 5 players would cost about 110 mil which gives us around 10-13 mil left to buy a back up right back.
If all of the above can be done before the end of the transfer window then I will be very excited for the upcoming season but I fear that we will probably end up disappointed.
