catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
@Eggs @catcherintherye
Barrios is a bit of an anomaly as none of us (i think) has seen him much.
He looks very good at tackling and has leadership ability (captain at his former team in Colombia) as well as being rated similar to Casemiro + Mascherano...also Real, Spurs and Chelsea have all been heavily linked.
In the WC games and youtube (the clips where they show the touches over 90mins of a player) he seems to make alot of short passes (back/sideways/forwards), enjoys a dribble and plays a few long passes as well.
Apparently hes the Boco fans favourite player and despite his red card against river plate hes only been sent off once in 2.5 years.
That being said, hed need to adapt to the league and as we saw with Mascherano that took a season at West Ham and some time at the RS.
His passing stats have been dire this season though at about 69% which apparently is well below his usual level...but who knows?
If his fee was the £14.5mil it was with his old release clause then it could be an interesting gamble as we know he is in sync with Mina at least.
I'm going off the World Cup really mate. His mate Lerma went for round 30 million and while I liked Lerma (he played number 16) I was more impressed with Barrios.
The two things I'd say are that Brands won't pay a fee over what he feels someone is worth. Secondly everything we've seen suggests he wanted Mina before the World Cup. It's likely he would have bought him off his form in South America. Which means Barrios is likely a consideration but also someone who is likely to be on our radar if we are looking in that direction.
As with Mina, who I broadly think has proven me right, I would be very happy if we signed Barrios.