2020/21 James Rodriguez

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degsy said:
They may have had players good enough to 'carry' him, most of our players can barely carry themselves
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Yep, I think he's done more running this season than he's done in his whole life as he's used to playing in the best teams who have a lot of the ball.
 
BlueToff said:
This also divvy idea that cause he's on a plane it means he's off on holiday ffs.

He's going to link up with the Colombia squad, as Carlo explicitly mentioned he has permission to do.

Mina will be off after the game today.
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It’s why Messi was excused from Barca’s last game last night as well. Might be moot though as I don’t see the tournament going ahead given that Colombia got their share of hosting stripped due to political issues and Argentina have suspended all club football due to a COVID outbreak
 
BlueToff said:
I've posted the stats in here.

We've got more minutes out of him than in four of the last eight seasons, and those three seasons he had more in were 13-14 at Monaco, 14-15 at Madrid and 16-17 at Bayern. We all knew we'd do well to get 25 games out of him. We've got 26, 24 of them being starts.

Our frustration comes when he isn't fit because our attack is so reliant on him. That isn't an issue with James, that's an issue with how we play, our management, tactics and other recruitment.
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Thanks mate, I’d missed them before I posted.

- On his minutes: “As many/more than his time at X, Y and Z” is a good indication of where our expectations should have been perhaps, but the tallest dwarf is still a dwarf. Sketchy availability and that’s only likely to diminish as he gets older.

- Defo agree with your last point, which is what I was clumsily trying to address before: If we have a player that could be great for us (putting availability issues to the side for now), but to unlock his potential we need to bring in a load of other players specifically geared towards his style of play, do we go all out to recruit them? How confident are we he’ll still be around after next season? How confident are we he’ll be available for more than ~50% of games next season? How confident, therefore, are we that we wouldn’t just be repeating our recent trick of blowing a load of cash on players that are good on paper but end up being rubbish as a unit?

It is massively frustrating because we DID gel at the start of the season but for some reason it hasn’t happened at all since then. It’s an ultimately failed experiment IMO hence my POV that I’m not too bothered if he wants to do on to the MLS this summer.

I should say that has nothing to do with him going home to see his daughter - That’s 100% the right thing to do given he’s injured anyway.
 
BlueToff said:
We did it with Lukaku. People happy to see the back of players who are actually world class and could push us on if complimented with the right players, and then on the other hand they moan when we're served up dross, or have to play Sigurdsson 45 times a season.
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Chalk and cheese though mate. With Lukaku we absolutely should have moved heaven and earth to get the right players around him because that core could have been in place for 5-10 years and propelled us into the stratosphere.

Doing the same for James would get us one season max (in my opinion) and we’d be left with a James-shaped hole at the end of it with a bunch of players now complimenting either nobody at all or a very expensive question mark, assuming we find a supposed replacement.
 



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