Slaven Bilic has revealed that he needs “game changers” added to the squad and will remain in regular contact with co chairman David Sullivan from his Croatian home during the summer break.
Speaking ahead of his hospital visit for hip surgery he said: “We need quality players. Of course you always need quality players but sometimes you are buying players for the future, sometimes you are buying players for the squad to be back-ups and all that, but we are good in that department.
“OK, we can talk about, if some of the players go, we can refresh the team with new players, but mainly we need the players who are going to improve the quality and be the game-changers.
“There are no guarantees in football, but we need starting XI players in certain positions.
“We want it all, but those players are very hard to get and they cost a bit. They are pretty much the privilege of the big, big, big guns. We have to close our eyes on some things. We can’t expect them to tick all the boxes with a mark ten.
“But athleticism is very important in today’s football, especially in the Premier League if you are talking about physicality and all that. It’s got to be fit players with stamina, with pace definitely and the of course good enough in all other departments.
“It depends, because we are looking in a few positions. In some positions, we are looking for physicality and they may lack a bit of first touch and delivery, but if you are talking about midfield area, if we want something in midfield, and I’m not saying we do because we are good there, then we would like to add a bit more quality.”
We spend several days tying down Zabaleta. ManC go out & buy Bernada Silva like they are buying a pint of milk in Tesco. Says it all about the way things are.
I have been a critic of Bilic but actually his comments do
show what he is up against. Guardiola is treated like some sort of tactical genius, but what does he do. Lose against Monaco- ok go & buy their best players please. Brilliant! Reckon even I could work that out.
This will sound like sour grapes but if you take out our poor season does anyone think this PL season has been a good one? Chelsea wrap it up early. Final day nothing to play for except CL places-& that was a damp squib. Top sides beat the rest regularly. Same old names at the top, even after the Leicester thing last year. Financial Fair Play a distant memory. Nothing much is gonna change either as far as I can see. We will still go on supporting the same club, but how many of the ‘new’ football fans are going to stick with this product- just a thought?
I would say that despite our very poor showing we are a top 8 side that with a favourable run could challenge top 4, there is not a team in the top 4 that is anything special, the biggest change the last 5 seasons is the way teams press for 90 minutes, our players lacked the conditioning and training to do that. Bilic is saying all the right things, he always does, trouble for us is the players don’t follow what he says and don’t start games with any intensity, you can watch the players warm up and be fairly certain what type of performance you will get. I hope he fixes what is wrong during preseason because if he can and if he gets his game changers we will be a force COYI!!!