NYCFC Players Wanted Thread

Hey, as long as we can agree that your post meant what it said, this is a question I can take up. Just on its face, the claim that one of the three best central midfielders of his generation is only 10% better in two of his strongest aspects than a player whose career peak was four years with a midtable Serie A side, and whose only career appearance for his national team came in a 2011 friendly, seems totally insane to me. I guess we'd have to come up with some sort of quasi-objective definition for what it means for one player to be a certain number of percentage points better than another, some sort of soccer WAR or something. But what percent better would you say Iniesta is than a guy like Andre Gomes? What percent better is Barça is than Atalanta (no Roma jokes please, it's too soon)? Atalanta than NYCFC? Maxi than Kwame Awuah? Seems to me there's a lot wider range here than you're acknowledging.

Or maybe the claim was that Iniesta's fallen off, which would lead us to Christopher's point.



Iniesta's decline has been strange in that it's had less to do with lost skill (obviously) or lost physical ability (he still plays a lot harder off the ball than most people assume, although only on limited minutes) than lost influence. He's unlucky that his prime coincided with Barcelona's shift away from the short-passing-and-counterpressing game where he's most effective to increasingly brutalist soccer under Tata, Luis Enrique, and Valverde. Losing Neymar as a left-side partner this year isolated him even more.

So I'm on board with the part of Midas's post that suggested however much better Iniesta is than Maxi, his talents wouldn't do NYCFC as much good as a team like Napoli. Think of it as a squad multiplier effect on our imaginary player ability percentage. He's a skill player built for combination passing, something he's still highly effective at, as we saw against Sevilla. It's just hard to find a team designed to take full advantage of that skillset, even at the Camp Nou. Much easier to go find a Chinese market for your family's wine business.

waiting to hear your argument for pirlo after this
 
This was really the entirety of my point, not to hang anyone up on something as arbitrary as the 10% number yanked directly from my posterior area.
But at the end of the day he's still connecting the dots rather than being a pure and direct threat. I can see possible realities where it works out, but I'd still rather go and get a direct attacking threat.
April 12th called and they want their conclusion back. Cue dummyrun xkcd graphic again.

Having said that, all the salt made the scenic route worth traveling.
 
I don't know if we're good with either Mata or Sweat, especially with Mata's contract extension being a real mistake in retrospect. Right now LB is probably our most glaring weak link. But that's a problem we should address next window, not in June 2019.

I think he meant don't do us any favors of coming here at 34 to retire on the pitch.
 
Is Fuchs even that good? I haven't seen Leicester at all this year, or even much last year, so I can't say much. Aside from their title run in which everyone on that team played out of their minds, has he done anything? Maybe not hearing often about a defender is a good thing, but I'm not understanding the publicity behind this guy.
 
Is Fuchs even that good? I haven't seen Leicester at all this year, or even much last year, so I can't say much. Aside from their title run in which everyone on that team played out of their minds, has he done anything? Maybe not hearing often about a defender is a good thing, but I'm not understanding the publicity behind this guy.

He was phenomenal last year, possibly their best player outside of Mahrez. His whoscored rating was 7.23 which put him in the top 25 players in the Prem... That said, he has seen a noticeable decline this year I am guessing because of age, so if that decline continues, do not want.
 
No. Don't need another Pirlo. We're past that stage, and MLS is past that stage.
Now I see Tina Turner singing "We Don't Need Another Pirlo."


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