Armel Bella-Kotchap of Mainz, 20 year old CB, supposedly joining Udinese for €5m. Wouldn’t mind him here.
He looks like a monstrous prospect. Only seen him a couple of times, once against Bayern and he looked very good. Showed his inexperience on occasions though but had the pace to rectify it. Definitely caught the eye though. I would of thought he'd of gone to one of the big boys in the Bundesliga though. That will be three CB's in now for Udinese seems far too much.
Been doing some amateur scouting for potential young wingers that would be suitable for the Championship and here's some youngsters i've found recently that I like the look of: Clemente José Montes Barroilhet Probably a bit raw for the PL at the moment and likely wouldn't qualify for a work permit straight away but he's a 20 year old winger playing for Universidad Católica in Chile. He's got everything needed to excel as a winger - he's quick, has great on the ball ability, an eye for goal and gets himself into good locations although finishing isn't amazing yet he can also be bit a bit selfish and does too much at times. He's hasn't been a regular yet, although the new season in Chile is due to start in a couple of weeks and I reckon he'll be a key part of their team this season, he got called up to the Chilean national team for their Copa America squad in the summer (although didn't play), but played in their recent friendlies against El Salvador + Mexico. Likely cost is probably around about the £2m mark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemente_Montes Johan Carbonero Oddly was on a 2 year loan from his club in Colombia to Gimnasia La Plata in Argentina - he's now returned to Colombia, but the amount of appearances he made in Argentina means he should qualify for a work permit. I really like his stats and his counter-attacking style - some of his runs in behind the defence are superb and he's very dangerous on the ball, and unlike Barroilhet above, he's a good finisher - netting 7 goals last season. At 5"7 he's not the tallest which isn't ideal but think he'd be a fantastic pickup for a Championship team. Probable cost again around the £2m mark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Carbonero
Initial impressions are that Carbonero wouldn't really make sense for a team like us even if we got relegated. I quite like the look of Montes though - he reminds me of Emile Smith-Rowe somehow. Good dribbler, tidy, tenacious. If he could indeed improve his finishing he could well be a very good prospect. His low pass completion percentage might also be a worry? Not sure if there are extenuating circumstances? Also, any reason why the dashboards don't also show xA? I'd have thought it'd also be handy to know for wingers/attacking mids.
Yeah it's not the best passing accuracy, but wingers tend not to have great passing accuracy (especially in non possession based teams) as they usually take more risks and harder passes since they're in the final third. All of our wingers this season have between 65-78% pass accuracy for instance, although I'd imagine the wingers for City/Liverpool would have much better accuracy due to being so focused on possession. I don't like how it groups AMs in with wingers for this reason, you'd imagine AMs have more options for passes and so would have a better pass accuracy, which would average down the wingers pass accuracy as a result. The dashboards have "open play xA" on them rather than xA
I had a look at the Palace squad to see if there were any decent players who played under Roy and are now out of favour and available either on loan or permanently. The pickings were slim but two possibilities jump out at me: Ruben Loftus-Cheek - played his best football in 17/18 on loan at Palace and would add a creative spark missing from our midfield. Jairo Riedewald - not used at all this season. Still think there’s a player there and he’s pretty versatile too.
Would be handy but he's appeared a fair few times for Chelsea this season so doubt they'd loan him out, or that we'd wish to use our last domestic loan spot on a midfielder. Can't remember how good he is, or likely isn't, but I don't think he plays in any of our most needed positions.
We all knew it would happen. Leventhal tells us earlier in the month that we're working on deals for two centre backs, so we end up signing one from Udinese and persevering with the existing ones that aren't good enough.
