la Máquina - Cristiano Ronaldo

futbol_bill wrote:From my perspective I couldn’t have picked a better year to spend more time with my grandchildren.

Meanwhile, uncle Flo is on the lookout for other people's grandchildren Missing out on Neymar must've been a traumatic experience for him.

It may be a transitional year, but it hasn't been much of a transition, so far. We've acquired players for the future, but not for the now. Maybe I shouldn't use the word, transition. There doesn't seem to be much agreeance on here, as to whether or not our current squad and players are good enough for the near future. Some think we only need minor adjustments to the squad, some think getting rid of Isco and Asensio + momentum/form is all that's required to get us back on track to winning, others think a more substantial overhaul is needed. "Transition" suggests that we're changing out the old for the new, yet we still seem to be milking our 3 time CL winning squad (4 times for some of them), minus our most elite player, plus a couple of kids. My biggest wish for 2019 is that we sign at least one established player. One such player would likely have an immediate impact, and just might convince Flo that, while pursuing teenage talents might pay off in the distant future, ignoring the present will undoubtedly lead to more pressing issues than a potentially even more inflated market 5-10 years from now. Ideally, we should have already prepared for this by now, but all we can do is make the most out of our current situation. Hopefully, things will start to look better in 2019

No doubt it's a transitional season. We were saying it before ZZ and CR left. The problem is, I think a lot of us assumed there would be (some) investment into the team to ease the transition so that it wouldn't be the drastic drop off we see now.

To be fair, it should never have been expected to continue to win trophies after getting 4 CLs out of 5 seasons! So regardless of who we have, who coaches or who we bought in or not, expecting trophies again this season was / is unrealistic based on a historical perspective. And thus year is definitely transitional. While we are debating worthingness of existing squad veterans, flo is betting on kids, plus retaining some of the veterans, plus hopefully 1 or 2 established stars.

Note: I’m not saying agreement of this, I’m simply saying it is proported to be Flo’s strategy.

We already 'kind of' got an established star in Courtois, but that's really not the type of established signing I think most of us had expected, or even wanted. Considering our timid transfer activity over the past couple of seasons, I remain sceptical about the type of player(s) we'll pursue in the next two transfer windows. We'll just have to wait and see.

futbol_bill wrote:To be fair, it should never have been expected to continue to win trophies after getting 4 CLs out of 5 seasons! So regardless of who we have, who coaches or who we bought in or not, expecting trophies again this season was / is unrealistic based on a historical perspective.

If this is true, then it's sadly a testament to the difference of expectations between Barcelona and Real Madrid. We shouldn't expect ourselves to win any major trophies in the near future because we have won five major ones in the last five years, but Barcelona have been winning major trophies almost every year since 2009 and yet they don't seem satisfied in the slightest with their trophy haul and continue to expect to win them every year.

And thus year is definitely transitional.

It's not. "Transitional" implies that you have started investing big in your squad and replacing the declining stars with proper elite talent. We are doing none of that. We're just flooding the team with kids who may or may not become successful in the future.

You call that transitional? I call it a proper and very efficient way of shooting oneself in the foot.

Nice timing Bill lol.

Yeah... i see his thinking. I'm trying to figure out why Flo would think like that. It goes completely against who he's been before.