11 Aug 2026 20:40:48
Looking like another week passing and we still chasing Barcola, leaving zero time to go after anyone else. It's clearly not done!
11 Aug 2026 21:12:13
Call me crazy, but I'm quite excited for this season. Munoz and Araujo seem like the kind of scrappy warriors we lacked. Jacquet and Leoni should hopefully feel their way into the team as the season goes on as well. I think Iraola will get Macca, Grav, and Dom working in the midfield. Most importantly, though, I think he will finally get Wirtz and Isak playing like the world-class talents we paid all that money for.
Whatever happens in the last couple of weeks of the Summer window, I'm just excited to see us playing aggressive and exciting football again. If we sell Gakpo and sign Barcola, great. If not, I'll probably get over it pretty quickly!
11 Aug 2026 21:20:42
Didn't we just sign Araujo while the Barcola deal is ongoing? Why could we not sign anyone else until Barcola is (or isn't) concluded. That doesn't make any sense at all.
11 Aug 2026 21:25:03
Namco, we can have more than one deal going at a time. They're not all sitting in a room waiting for their phones to ring.... Or maybe they are. ?♂️
11 Aug 2026 21:33:50
With you MK, I really like Araujo - for the loan and the player that he is.
Ironically, I would say he is similar to Konate in that his key attributes are his speed, power in the duel, strong in the air. Will be helpful covering the channels on the right side.
Hopefully, he is way more consistent tho.
I said all last season that Macca needed to play at CAM as his legs were a liability at CM. So I hope Iraola sees this as well.
11 Aug 2026 21:58:59
Faith, it's so easy to forget how optimistic we all were last summer about these players.
One bad season after the death of their close friend and a tactical disaster class hasn't made all of those same players bad overnight.
Iraola will get them back to where they should be. I think we'll be top 3 and win a trophy next season. League title within 3 years. ??
11 Aug 2026 22:03:18
Faith, no way Macca gets the cam slot ahead of Writz. If that's where he is going to play, it will be in rotation, nothing more. He just can't carry himself through the middle, so I'm not sure where he gets game time this season.
12 Aug 2026 00:00:11
I'm looking forward to seeing Iraola at the helm. He's going to be great for us. We won't win the big ones imo, but we'll be up there. I hope!!!!
12 Aug 2026 07:15:15
I'm with you, MK - I'm cautiously optimistic. I feel, if certain things fall in place and we get a bit more pace in this team, we could challenge. We have some gaps, but we also have a lot of quality which is being dismissed because of the poor season last season.