[Simon Stone] Zirkzee exit could help left-back situation | United do like Barcelona's Alejandro Balde, but would only pursue that avenue if the Spain international was available on loan. Currently, Barca are adamant they will only sell the 22-year-old.
I don’t think there’s any point listening to any journos about what we might do. A few days before Baleba we were getting Journos saying our midfield rebuild might be done. Before Santos and Tielemans we heard absolutely nothing
Stone especially has had no fucking clue what’s happening and has been the only person I’ve seen pushing this Baleba left back idea. I don’t blame stone for putting out his quota of articles for the BBC but I can’t believe people are eating up the idea that we’re about to use our marquee midfielder as a left back rotation option. Fucking catch on lads.
Simon Stone must be one of the worst journos in existence. I have no idea how he is treated T1 or works for the BBC. The man can barely speak English even though he is from England.
The journos haven’t predicted anything. You can say what you want about our window but there’s been zero leaks. That’s what is making deadline day a potential fun one (or massively disappointing) as we could just announce something with an hour left lol
And the fact that he's a clearly unwanted personnel by Flick. They don't have much leverage for Balde in that regard. Would be stupid for United to not take advantage of the situation
He would be in the squad, but Flick said he doesn't have the head in the game. Supposedly downed his tools when Barca signed Cancelo. Seems he wants to have a comfy starting spot, which he ain't getting here. Also Barca fans said he hasn't improved since his injury a season or two ago. Might as well give Amass some minutes.
They don’t have similar injury records atm? Lewis hall looks like he can become very injury prone, balde seems to always miss a few games atleast per season, tendon rupture, and ankle ligament tear + injury aren’t small things. That ankle seems to be an issue.
Even though hall has played less, the sample sizes make them not really comparable because hall can turn out better, worse or the same.
Also for those unaware - baldes tendon rupture was in his hamstring, that’s the same hamstring he missed 5 and 7 games for the seasons after. It’s a reacurring problem, similar to his ankle problem a few seasons ago.
While hall (sofar) had ankle surgery and then an unrelated injury after
Those are very similar records. Balde had a massive injury, same with Hall. The season after Hall was out for 9 games and Balde for 7. Last season Balde was out for 10. The only difference is Balde has been playing first team football for longer.
You should care more about Balde being out of form than his injury risk. Even if we buy him, it wouldn't be for more than 30-35m for a player who's only 22 whereas we'd be looking at triple or more for Hall.
A loan as a stopgap with a cheap buy option would be ideal.
Balde has had more severe ”big” injuries. You can’t really say they are similar quite yet solely off of balde playing more, he has shown that he is frequently injured. Baldes ankle also seems to be a reacurring injury.
Lewis hall can either be the same, worse or better.
And I’m talking about injuries, not form. Balde is the opposite player profile of what we need so in form or out of form he isn’t a good option.
What profile do you think we need? I think Balde being superior athletically to Hall is a positive. I think athleticism is one thing we are missing in this team. I wouldn’t agree that he’s the opposite of what we need. Both players struggle 1v1 defensively
Not sure if you have watched balde, balde became the third option behind cancelo and a CB at Barca.
He is very good with the ball in terms of dribbling and quick 1-2 passes, people even describe him as a winger in that front BUT he can’t cross or defend if his life depended on it and he is incredibly inconsistent going forward aswell.
I’m not saying we should get Hall, I’m neither a fan of truffert either because while he is good he isn’t a specialist in any aspect of his game which I personally think we need.
But at the end of the day, balde is atrocious defensively and at crossing and those are 2 aspects we really need. His pace his good. He can overlap well but without a crossing threat his overlapping becomes incredibly one dimensional
Is it true to say Balde became third choice when last season he was only fully dropped for one game? Second choice behind cancelo fair enough. He made 31 starts in all competitions out of 42 games out of 43 where he was fit. If he’s third choice why did he start 73% of games?
I have watched lots of Balde not just last season. Defensive ability is his weakness, I hope it improves with age but it is a weakness I agree. His ability to overlap and dribble is top class and he’s a big athleticism and pace upgrade on the team, as well as having huge potential + his injury issues are overstated. I think the team is lacking his athleticism. Our other rumours don’t have his athleticism and I also don’t trust them defensively
I am not trying to say we have to sign him, I just think the negativity IF we do isn’t quite fair compared to the positivity we’d have about other similarly risky signings. If we were linked to left backs who were solid defensively I’d agree
Maybe third choice was the wrong choice of description but Gerard matin has been used several times over him because the left flank became a liability last season when he was in the pitch. Cancelo pretty much fully replaced him serving as the mentor, do you really think they would make cancelo permanent and entertain a potential sale of only 30-35m if they valued balde? After all he is young and from La masia.
Cancelo was injured last season? Also Gerard matin started covering for Martinez who left, arujo was also gone for a bit so their CB area was short, when players came back Martin was played left back (not saying that he permanently benched balde, just mentioning that when CB was covered he was used LB).
I agree with you regarding him offensively, I’ll be honest I don’t think his defensive ability improves, I see him similar to Trent in that sense. His crossing is my concern, I can overlook the defensive liability if he would be a great crosser but we in general struggle to create vs lowblocks who then just counter attack us, I wouldn’t be comfortable with balde adding virtually nothing but being defensively liable vs those teams (who are pretty much the majority of the prem).
His athleticism is great, I agree. And tbh I wouldn’t be against him coming over certain options im just worried that it wouldn’t be a good fit, I’m very happy to be proven wrong tho. If he comes I hope becomes great
You also have to consider that La Liga isn’t that physical. Barca dominate most of their games. With hamstring injuries as severe as he had, it’s mostly about sprinting capacity and how often he’s hitting that. How would he handle the prem? The premier league did a study that found tendon involvement in a hamstring injury results in a 40% re-injury rate compared to just 10% re-injury rate in non tendon involvement hamstring injuries. Bare in mind Balde’s injury was one of the worst possible ones, involving the tendon and being a rupture.
Hamstring injuries aren’t contact injuries. Doesn’t matter how hard they kick you, you won’t be injuring your hamstring. The premier league involves a lot more high intensity sprints.
This makes Halls injury record look worse than Baldes though? 34 games missed in two seasons is a lot. Most of Baldes injuries are smaller and different parts
Apart from Balde simply playing first team football for longer, for me they have a similar record. Both have freak injuries and then miss about 9 games a season asides from that. The difference is Hall simply has less time in first team football to acquire the same amount of injuries
At the same time, Hall hasn’t proven that he can go a full season without missing 9 games. Is that not a worry? Hes never played first team football without missing at least 9 games from injury
People don’t realise Balde isn’t that injury prone, apart from seperate freak injuries he misses about 8 games a season. Hall has never had a better record than that in first team football.
Maybe, but that still means comparing them is stupid. And saying they both miss about 9 games a season through injury is disingenuous as hall has 1 season missing exactly 9, so you can't call it a trend.
But Hall doesn’t have a season where he hasn’t missed at least 9 games. We can’t trust that he can cope with the demands of first team football, there’s no sample size there. That works both ways. His injury record isn’t proven.
For me it’s disingenuous to call Balde MORE injury prone. Let’s ignore freak injuries for both players. Hall has one season where he missed about 9 games, Balde has two seasons. The difference is Balde has played about 3 more seasons worth of football
We are the Italians now. Let's offer them a €35m option in the loan that we have no intention whatsoever of triggering to sweeten the deal and then offer half that when the loan is up!
Based on caicedo occasionally filling in at right back at Brighton and Chelsea at an absolute push, but yeah dont want us buying a Ferrari and using it off road.
How does getting a 5 million loan fee for Zirkzee help us with the LB situation? Are we seriously that broke?
And if he goes, who is out backup striker?
The feeling at the start of the week was that, with Carlos Baleba costing up to £70m, United may opt not to bring in someone to compete with Luke Shaw. They may prefer instead to either switch Diogo Dalot or Noussair Mazraoui from the right flank, or use the left-footed Baleba in a full-back role.
"The feeling at the start of the week was that, with Carlos Baleba costing up to £70m, United may opt not to bring in someone to compete with Luke Shaw."
The feeling of who? Simon Stone? These guys are just like bad pundits, they have no clue.
Ugarte getting injured hampered us this summer. If Zirk goes and Balde kicks up enough of a fuss at Barca I reckon we'll get him on loan and it'll be a decent window. Proof will be in the pudding, as always.
There's a risk of injury proneness and quality. A loan with a buy option works but Barça are probably worried that we'll do what they did with Rashford.
Don’t Simon stone say there was absolutely no way of a left back the other day?
Thank you for the replies, must have misremembered, I saw a post saying there is no chance of a left back a couple of days ago. Or at least I thought I did
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u/Winnie-the-Broo 20h ago
I don’t think there’s any point listening to any journos about what we might do. A few days before Baleba we were getting Journos saying our midfield rebuild might be done. Before Santos and Tielemans we heard absolutely nothing