With the money Premier League clubs have, and the January transfer window have, are there any hidden gems you can see Premier League clubs going for?
AB: I suppose the question is, are there any hidden gems anymore.
JH: Well I think there are players who are under appreciated. And I don’t think this is a player who will go in January, but again it’s just testament to smart recruitment, is what Fiorentina did with Kalinić, they bought Kalinić for €5.5m, from Dnipro. And Dnipro got to the Europa League final last season he scored goals in that team. But again a player who’s perhaps underestimated, you look back at his career and think, he didn’t make it at Blackburn, but he’s scoring goals and he’s up there with Gonzalo Higuain and Paulo Dybala and other players with perhaps bigger names. There are players out there. That’s again one of the things with Arsenal, they say we’ve been scouting day and night for months and we just can’t find anyone who can improve our team. I’m not saying Kalinić could improve their team, but it’s just not true. And you see teams like Fiorentina able to punch above their weight because they do deals like this.
RH: Hidden gems? The players I like everyone knows about. You can go through the whole Gladbach team and think they’re probably undervalued and under appreciated individually. Sane is someone the whole of Europe talks about, hidden gem would be pushing it. Maybe the closest I can think of in terms of hidden is Kostic. Someone that Schalke wanted when Draxler left, still very young, still needs to play more, but I think he’s a really good player. Even Didavi, he’s got injury problems but he’s someone Premier League clubs looked at because he’s your classic premier league player in many ways, box-to-box, loves to shoot. And Stuttgart are in real trouble, so I can see some clubs asking questions there.
JH: If you want a hipster pick in Serie A, well not even Serie A that’s how hipster it is. A name that’s receiving a lot of hype at the moment is a player for Cesena called Stefano Sensi, who’s seen as the new Marco Verratti. Of course Verratti never played in Serie A, PSG picked him up on the back of Pescara’s promotion, but he’s seen as a player in the same mould. He’s been linked to Inter in recent weeks, because they lack a player who can get a passing game going, like a Pirlo, like a Verratti. So maybe a foreign club will do what PSG did with Verratti and take Sensi as someone with a very good future.
AB: I think there’s no doubt that Premier League clubs will shop in France again, I don’t think there’s any doubt. And I think also, there’s a sense certainly, obviously outside PSG and probably Lyon, that, French clubs want to sell to English clubs. They feel this is the Golden age of filling their pockets. When you look at last summer and what they made from Thauvin. Thauvin is an obvious example, Marseille were desperate to dump him, and no one with half a brain would’ve taken him, and yet they found a buyer in the Premier League, and there were other interested parties. Obviously Marseille have done very well out of that, getting Cabella on loan as well. Jordan Veretout going to Villa, really good player with a lot of potential but not ready, Jordan Ayew who I do like but went for way more than he’s realistically worth. So these mid level clubs are looking at this and thinking you know what, we sell one player, two players, this is our budget for the next season and a bit. It’s something that’s potentially going to help these teams, maybe not compete, but push for Europe, or win a cup. Lorient, you wondered how they’d do for goals when they lost Ayew for example, but they couldn’t not sell him at that price, so they did, and picked up Benjamin Moukandjo for a fraction of the price, who’s only just been leapfrogged by Zlatan yesterday as the top scorer in the French top flight. So like the lads have said, there’s quality out there, but English clubs don’t really spend a lot of time trying to find it because they’ve got enough money that they don’t have to. I think it’s a new way, not exactly to bring parity to the European game, but certainly to stop clubs in other countries getting left behind. It’s not just every players ambition to go the Premier League and set yourself alive, it’s becoming every European clubs ambition to sell to a Premier League team.
JH: It’s like a trophy for them!
There’s rumours that Klopp is going to start a raid on Dortmund, Gundogan, Hummels and Subotic to name just a few. Would they make the difference for Liverpool, and what would the BVB fans think of Klopp getting their key players?
RH: Well, I think it really depends. There are some of the players you mentioned I think Dortmund fans would be, I wouldn’t say happy to the see the back of them, but would be quite relaxed with them going. I don’t think they would really mind if Subotic were to leave, Gundogan has been playing, flirting with leaving, they don’t really see him as a real Dortmund player. Hummels is a bit tricky, I don’t think he’s necessarily the most popular Dortmund player either, as far as the fans are concerned. I don’t see Klopp making a move, I don’t see Klopp buying two or three Dortmund players. I think he knows their faults more than anyone, and I think the players he’s got now are actually really well suited to the kind of game he wants to play, more so than Gundogan and Hummels who are, fairly slow, in the case of Gundogan quite prone to injuries, I don’t seem him as a natural buy. I’d be surprised if you see more than one Dortmund player arrive in the forseable future. The obvious one is Subotic because he’s available and Liverpool need depth in the centre back positions. Anything else I think is just lazy journalism.
Can Serie return to it’s Golden era and become more popular overseas and in England.
JR: I think we’re a long way from, it depends what you define as a Golden Era. It got dropped from Channel 4 because it wasn’t as competitive a league, hadn’t been as competitive in European terms, the players weren’t coming. There are massive, humongous infastrcutural problems in Serie A, and as well as they’re doing, even if they’re to get that 4th Champions League spot back, there would still be a chasm in terms of money. I know Rafa makes very good points about how you can’t necessarily go out and spend your way to success, but just in terms of the spending power, the player power of wages, they are so far behind, and it’s only going to increase in the short term. The merchandising power of the big Spanish clubs, the German clubs and especially the Premier League. The Italian’s I think, what has happened perhaps, is that they’ve settled into a new reality, which is possibly why in the last couple of years they’ve started taking the Europa League seriously and doing well in that. So a Golden Era I wouldn’t call it that. I think it’s very entertaining to watch, and possibly at the moment more so than it was in the 90s when you had Capello’s Milan winning the league and conceding what, three goals, with Deasille as your creative midfielder, and that kind of thing. But I don’t think that Serie A in those terms is going to happen anytime soon.
How far can the teams go in Europe?
JR: Roma are like a giddy car crash of a team and it will be to everyone’s entertainment if they go any further, especially whoever they’re playing. Napoli look the form team in the Europa League. Their group has been weak but I think they’re fantastic, the players they’ve got there, what sari has done with them compared to what they were doing under Benitez. Napoli look a fantastic shot in the Europa League. Juventus had a stroke of fortune, and of course any club in Europe who’s successful in Europe generally needs a bit of fortune but I think things fell in their direction last year when they got to the final, which isn’t to underestimate what they did, it was magnificent, but they were significantly outclassed in the final. They’re really getting themselves together now Juve, they could go certainly to the quarter finals maybe the semi finals. They’re a good cup team, they’re compact, they’re all rowing in the same direction as the Italians like to say. Allegri knows what he’s doing, the new players coming have really integrated brilliantly, Dybala’s doing fantastically. Those two clubs could do really well. And the great thing for the Italians is that, in terms of the coefficient, you only need a couple of teams to do well because you’re only dividing that coefficient by six, whereas all the English results are divided by eight, as even though West Ham went out in the playoff they still count as one of the clubs that are in Europe.
What has happened at Lyon this season, should Fournier go?
AB: Second part yes. First part, I think if you asked a lot of people round the club, they’d just say spoilt little brats of players. The squad should be better than it was last season, because they’ve kept all the key elements, they’ve all signed new contracts, with fanfare in some sense, like Lacazette and Fakir it’s too protect their value going forward. Always the sense was that they would knock out one or both of those after Euro 2016 after they’ve had a presumably strong tournament, for a lot of money. I think there’s been a difficulty in the younger players accepting players like Velbuena, accepting the unbalance in terms of highrachy, because Velbuena arrives with a rep of course, in terms of what he is as a worker as well as a player, you’ve got nothing to approach him for he’s a great pro. But it’s changed the balance of the team on the pitch and in the dressing room. I think all of a sudden the pressure’s been put on those players, they’ve all be re-upped at quite a big rate, and a lot’s expected of them now. Not only do they have to go and reproduce what they did last season, and I’m thinking less of Lacazette but probably more of players like Tolisso, certainly he’s someone who has attracted a lot of negative attention in recent weeks after he had a very good season last year. Someone said to Velbuena, how do you feel about paying for a club when sooner rather than later, everyone locally is going to know how much you get paid. He saidis that really the case they said yeah that’s definitely the case. I think some of the younger players have found that really difficult. All of a sudden people know exactly how much they’re getting, wanting them to perform every week. So whereas it was a nice surprise what they were doing last season, they were playing with a certain freedom, which you could see in some of the football they played, that freedom hasn’t really existed this season, I think they’ve felt the pressure quite badly and they’ve not got the experience to deal with it some of those players and I think Fournier as a coach is not really at the top level experience to deal with that, especially in terms of Champions League. I think he will go, simply because as Velbuena put it after the game last night, everyone knows it’s far easier to sack the coach than to sack 14 players. It will be someone experienced, because there’s a sense at the board that these young men have to be made to face their responsibility, so I think a more established coach whether that’s someone as good as Remi Garde I don’t know. A few of the former players who have been mentioned aren’t ready yet so it won’t be them. I suppose the good thing for them is the gulf between PSG and the rest is absolutely massive so it’s not as if they can’t make up the gap between them and the 2nd spot, and I’d still back them to get it, but they need to make the change.
Any particular spoiled brats?
AB: Well a few people have asked about Lacazette I think that’s really unfair, because again, the fact that the President made their offer for him public to pressure him into signing a contract extension. That’s a horrible move I think, it sort of created this wedge, even before the season had started, between arguably the star player and the club, which is not great. There are reports this week that Tolisso on France U21 duty taking the mick out of Claudio Beauvue in the dressing room and telling everyone how rubbish he was. Obviously the Guingamp players who used to play with him, as soon as they got out of the dressing room got straight on the phone to him and told him about it. Toilsso was dropped for the next match. I think it’s just the case of them understanding that they’re not kids anymore, they’re at a massive club and a lot’s expected of them.
We obviously saw Gladbach beat Bayern yesterday to continue their resurgence, Dortmund are having a very good season, perhaps Leverkusen and Wolfsburg not so much. Long term how far do you think those sides can go, bearing in mind the difficulty of competing with Bayern?
RH: Well I think you have the problem that what Dortmund have done over the last few years is incredibly difficult, which is not only to get to the level where they can challenge Bayern but actually stay at that level even in terms of making that 2nd spot their own. I think even last season when they were doing badly, their actual football level was still the 2nd best in Germany, even though Wolfsburg finished 2nd. I think Gladbach to be even in the conversation is incredible to see where they’ve come from in the last four or five years. But it’s very, very hard to keep that going, not to have your players nicked, to be lucky with your manager, to get the right results, also in Europe. The Bundesliga suffers from the fact that no one has been able to do what Bayern have done. And Dortmund themselves 10 years where they went off the boil after that fantastic run they had in the late 90s. So I hope that Gladbach will be able to establish themselves among the elite. But it’s very, very tough because everything is so organic in the Bundesliga. In order to have success you’re always dependent on success. As soon as you fall down it’s very hard to get back up because there’s no outside investment, no one saying here’s €100m have go have a go, so you need to get it right every single year and that’s really, really tricky. It would be great to see more teams doing it but it’s incredibly difficult.
Oscar Wood
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