Who was VVD @ 22?
He certainly wasn't a high-profile player. He was also yet to make his international debut.
When all we have to debate over is competition for places. You know this Milan has a bright future ahead.
Correct. All of you here that don't rate Botman probably don't watch Lille outside of Champions League. Botman coming in is suppose to rejuvenate our back line BEFORE it ages and becomes a problem.
Kjaer is good, but he's no spring chicken. Romagnoli is solid, but not particularly good (plus his wages are ridiculous), and we haven't even agreed to a renewal for him yet.
Let me remind you all that recency bias has always been a thing here, as much as people also forget that form is temporary. The lot of you were all shitting on Rebic a month ago because he only contributed to a single goal against Salernitana since he came back from injury. Now that he's been healthy and contributing more, a bunch of you have changed their tune.
Barahim Diaz is also a good example. In the last 5 matches of last season, he suddenly became a world beater after the goals and assists that he bagged during the last 5 games, and yet now most of the people here are slagging him off for not performing after his bout with Covid.
Kalulu may be in the form of his life right now, but what happens when he suddenly cannot sustain that for a full season? What happens when he gets tired and starts making mistakes? You'll all be clamoring about why we didn't bring in a capable and young CB to partner Tomori.
Botman is our assurance that fans never need to complain about such a scenario, and yet here we have fans complaining about us making backup plans.
Trust the process and that Maldini and Management know what they're doing.
Lmao. If we get Sanches, Botman and 2 good attacking players we will probably win 5 scudettos in a row.
Good times ahead.
This is basically the other reason why any of you would not want Botman. Because you think that it will "Spread the resources" and not allow us to buy attacking talent.
Just a reminder that Rebic came to us for around 5M (plus an Andre Silva Swap, but that's besides the point, accounting), Ibra and Giroud didn't cost us an arm and a leg. Origi is coming for free. Diaz is here on a 2 year loan. Leao was our one big investment and look how that turned out before this season?
Sure we could always throw money at the problem and buy a 60M Haaland or a 70M Vlahovic and get ourselves into debt, but that is not DA MILAN.
We have always been the team to dig out talent, nurture them into superstars and then reap the benefits.
We are not above buying big names, yes, but most of the time it works horribly for us (Higuaian, Bonnucci, Essien, Fernando Torres, Huntelaar to name a few).
Again, trust the process and that Maldini & Co know what they're doing more than all the newspapers and fans.
Also, Maldini always mentioned that Elliot never set a limit on spending for players or transfer fees. The player purchase just had to fit with what Management were trying to achieve at the club (Ibra, Kjaer, Giroud for experience at low costs, and a whole bunch of high potential youngsters or talents who have been cast aside by their clubs like Tomori and Theo) to be approved.
Buying Botman to ensure that the defence will be decked out for 5 to 7 years doesn't mean that we can't spend any money to revamp the aging attack.
If our revenues for this season are around the 300M mark, that means we have around 210M to work with transfer-wise. More if Investcorp/RedBird come in. Us bringing in Botman, Origi, Renato for around 45M does not even make a dent in that potential war chest amount, so what are you all worried about?
The unfortunate thing about this is still the 14M a season rent that we need to pay the Milan city council to even USE the San Siro, not to mention upkeeping expenses. We lose over 40% of our gate receipts just to play on a shitty pitch surface every two weeks.
Now imagine we had our own Stadium, eh?
