Ramón Rodríguez Verdejo (AKA Monchi)

[cdbearsfan]

We have millions of central midfielders. Sure he would probably have played this season because we got three injured at once, but he is hardly in a position of need. We were penny-pinching to get within the rules, keeping a player we don't need would likely have rendered us unable to keep/sign a player that we do.

[Drummond]

I'm sure they are, the question really is whether he'd cut it here and get into our team. I'm not sure he would.

What are you basing that on? You may be right but like someone else has already said, it would have been nice to find out. He's not a young kid, he's 24.

Based on the fact that there's nobody I'd rather have than Kamara (perhaps Rodri) and he's not offering what Tielemans does. We have Barkley (I think) and Onana, along with McGinn, and from what I've seen of him he's not getting in ahead of any of them right now.

More importantly, the manager doesn't think he will either, and I trust his opinion more than mine.

He wasn't wanted, Iling Junior wasn't either, they were makeshifts in the Luiz PSR shenanigans, and as such they just won't get picked.

[Somniloquism]

With Barrenchea (and some of the others), I suspect Unai gave them the once over and stated not for the first team, loan and then sell when possible. I do think Ned was one bought to be in the first team, but didn't pass some tests in the 6 months he was here Unai has put him in the same piles.

[algy]

Slowly slowly, things are now beginning to emerge, and the clear problems being played out on the pitch becoming obvious that something here was very wrong, Monchi's departure, who with a world class reputation and respect as a serious football man, connections everywhere, which is why Emery wanted him now being allegedly replaced by a man with a very local almost organic view of the game, don't spend money on players when you can develop them through your academy, I can see how this works in Spain, the Premiership works an entirely different way, always has and always will. The very team that's just pulled of a very good result against us have virtually replaced their whole squad to try and stay in the Premiership, nature of the beast.

I do hope Emery knows what he's doing.

Yeah, I’d wondered about that bit - seems a very different direction than the one we’ve been taking to date.

Maybe that’s part of it though. Thanks to PSR/FFP/SCR, we don’t have much option but to focus on our youth team more heavily. I’d guess the likes of Rory Wilson will just start to be coming through now, so maybe that’s also feeding in to the thinking.