Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Lots of players still haven't gone for a fraction of what Pogba's going for though. And the marketing side of this won't pay a fraction of his wages let alone put a dent into his fee. As for the fee and the implications, it's not just going to be a 1 time hit. He sets a precedent. Whenever you go for a player now Pogba's fee will be the benchmark. It's a massive gamble.
Had you been signing one of the absolute very best players in the world then you'd say it's expensive but you swollow it but Pogba? I've drawn comparrisons to the Di Maria signing before but it's very similar. Di Maria was no better than Sanchez (worse given how things have turned out), a rung or 2 below the best players in the world, yet you paid near double what Arsenal paid. He's better but there's no way Pogba's 3 x better than Xhaka for example. And we keep hearing about how good he might become - he's 23 not 17. By 23 the likes of Ronaldo and Messi were already performing at the very top level.
A very good player, potentially an excellent player and undoubtedly will improve Utd but the fee's crazy no matter how you look at it.
Sure, because they paid a huge fee for Di Maria and since then have had to match that fee for every player they've bought? Or wait, no they didn't and the big fee set no precedent at all.
On comparing him to Ronaldo and Messi, Ronaldo's break out season where he went from 17 to 31 goals and was his 6th full seasonseasons for both clubs, if you want to count the year going from 9 to 17 goals, it was his 5th full season. Pogba has only just played his 4th full season at any club, Ronaldo at the same point had just had a season scoring only 9 goals, he was good but that wasn't mindblowing by any means and nothing like the player he is today. Age is significantly less important than the number of games. It happens consistently where players go from showing all the potential with too many average/anonymous games to being consistently brilliant and stepping up their game.
Again with messi it was his 5th full season he jumped from 10/14 goals in the previous two years to 23 goals in the league, then 34 goals the year after, 50 goals came in his 8th full season.
Pogba is effectively behind where you'd expect precisely because of his early time at Utd and not being played in 15-30 games(starting and sub across all competitions) for a couple of years before he went to Juve and that itself is the reason he moved, because players like messi/Ronaldo got those chances to start playing at that age and Pogba didn't. He's not going to score 30 goals a season because he's not a wide attacker or a striker.
Another example is Bale, counting 06/07 as his first significant season(2 appearances before that) it was 12/13 when he went from 9 goals to 21 after 6 'full' seasons, 4 of them had 23+ games, the first season he moved to Spurs was only 12 games in all competitions, if you excluded that or bundled that into the second Spurs season you get his break out season being after 5 seasons of significant numbers of games per season.
This isn't new or different, this is something you see repeatedly in top players, a monumental jump in level in the 5th or 6th season. It's also something I pointed out when comparing Martial, he was also effectively a late starter and the level he performed at last year in what you could consider to be only his 2nd or 3rd full season highlights just how ridiculously good the kid is.
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