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Open Thread: July 20, 2021

No If, Ands or Butts...

The Open Thread/Daily Merengue is a place where you can discuss anything and everything related to football. Feel free to discuss the topics presented here, or start your very own discussions! The Open thread will be posted every day by one of the mods: Valyrian Steel, Felipejack, YoSnail, Ezek Ix or NeRObutBlanco.

HAZARDOUS WOES

Marca has reported that Hazard has now been put on the transfer market by our club as we attempt to reduce our wage bill (for project Mbappe), citing Hazard as the player with the most expensive injuries, beating out our very own legendary Gareth Bale. These are wages paid to him whilst he was out injured, with a figure of 17 Million euros in salary over the course of 2 seasons. Hazard has openly stated that he doesn’t intend to leave Real Madrid a failure, but i’m not sure our club can afford give him another season for redemption. Unfortunately due to injury and a long standing inability to stay fit, Hazard has become the butt of all jokes...and i’m not kidding.

THE COST OF DELAYED “TRANSITION”

According to ESPN, Varane is on the verge of completing his Man Utd move. I’ve been saying it for weeks that he’s already a Man Utd player, with only the transfer fee to be agreed within both clubs (around 58 Million or so). What a summer to lose both our starting CB’s, but this is what happens when the non-existent “transition” is delayed, or simply non-existent. A hard pull always happens. I don’t blame Varane for not wanting to stick around and deal with the growing pains of our developing youngsters, whilst watching our club ask for pay cuts from him, or risk another year of his life and prime waiting for Eden Hazard to finally be fit and contribute to our attack on a consistent basis. When he can always go and earn more money elsewhere (12 MIL net after taxes, way more than the petty renewal we offered him). Even if it’s under a manager/club whose main priority is to finish top 4, talk less of winning trophy’s. Not like we’re able to properly compete for trophy’s either. The crazy thing about this is that he’s leaving in his prime. Very, very few players leave Real Madrid in their prime.

GARETH BREXIT BALE

This is a player that we should’ve sorted out his transfer long ago (3 seasons ago), now we’ll have to deal with the political ramifications of keeping him alongside his heavy wages of which he didn’t take a pay cut when requested by the club. So Bale is now a Non-EU player per AS. We only have 3 slots in the team for Non-EU players and we’re already over occupied in those slots with Vinicius, Rodrygo, Militao etc. Meaning if we, for some ungodly reason, decide to keep bale for this season, a complicating call is going to have to be made regarding our Brazilian trio. Worst case scenario, our club does what is right and reaches mutual agreement to void bale’s contract by giving him his 25 mil from the 50 Man Utd is giving us for Varane and we bring an end to this long soured relationship. No need for it to dragon another season (see what i did there? welsh dragon? DRAG-ON??? bah dum tiss, i’m here all week folks lol). Alternative worst case scenario, we keep bale for his last season and either bump Vini/Rodrygo down to castilla, which will complicate our use of them during the regular season and potentially hamper their development, or we loan them out, another risk.

LAST MINUTE

We’ve also reportedly offered vinicius to Man Utd. Meaning we might actually plan on keeping bale another season....

ICYMI

Kubo set to sign for Real Sociedad, hopefully this ends well for Kubo as IMO he’s way better than their own prospects. Oyarzabal was one of the most frustrating players to watch for Spain during the euros. We recently drew against Rayo Vallecano in a friendly scrimmage of sorts.

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