Well. I’m not Eddie Howe but I’m not bad at championship manager and I know my way round transfermarkt.co.uk.
So I’m looking ahead at Brentford, January and beyond.
Eddie likes to play 4-4-2 with two central midfielders who can both attack and defend. And that the best form of defence is attack.
Which brings us to January and I am assuming a few criteria – that the player is in last year of contract, does not play for an EPL club, and is good.
I’ve selected a player for every position, also showing their current value (according to transfermarkt). Hopefully three or four will be enough:
- GK – Thomas Stakosha – Lazio – £7m
- LB – Aihen Munez – Real Sociedad – £6m
- LCB – Alessio Romagnoli – AC Milan – £18m
- LCB – John Brooks – Wolfsburg – £13m
- RCB – Jason Denayer – Lyon – £23m
- RB – Noussair Mazraoui – Ajax – £17m
- DCM – Denis Zakaria – B M’gladbach – £25m
- ACM – Frank Kessie – AC Milan – £50m
- LW – Jeremie Boga – Sassuolo – £18m
- RW – Ousman Dembele – Barcelona – £45m
- RW – Gareth Bale – Real Madrid – £9m
- SS – Paulo Dybala – Juventus – £45m
- CF – Randal Muani – Nantes – £9m
Personally, I think LB, LCB, DCM, RW and CF or SS are key positions. The rest can come as frees in the summer.
Dubravka – Manquillo, Romagnoli/Brooks, Schar, Munez – ASM, Willock, Zakaria, Dembele – Wilson and Muani.
Of course, some in our squad may thrive with proper coaching, but all I’m saying is that, irrelevant of what the other EPL clubs do, we have enough to stay up.
Players like Tarkowski, Lingard and Nketiah would bring some EPL experience with them, but I’m sure that clubs that have tried to block the takeover or impose a transfer embargo are picking the wrong enemy.
