Summer mercato 2012

[Ryo]

Don't be silly to think Alcanara alone will make our midfield great.

Midfield of Nocerino, Montolivo and Alcantara would be worst midfield trio since Allegri came, with no real power and no real protection for the defense. Many people are misjudging Nocerino to be new Gattuso, when they're not event close: Gattuso was fantastic defensive midfielder, aggressive, pretty quick, strong, very intelligent, could cover the space of two men... Nocerino is none of that: He can't cover, he's not strong, he's often found missing in defensive actions... Nocerino is good box-to-box midfielder and that's it. Whoever you put on the other side of midfield, you'll need a real defensive midfielder behind the two.

Agreed. And I believe that Alacantra, regardless of how good he may or may not be in the future is just one player in a host of players. Our current midfield is not in a "buy one, fix all" situation. More likely than not, we probably need 3 actual star Midfield signings to remain competitive in CL, the League and anything else we engage in next season.

Plus, selling Thiago Silva for Alacantra may just up our midfield by say 20% output, but it drops our defence by like 75% output. Does that really help our team at all?

We haven't even found a true, long-term replacement for Nesta yet, why sell the long-term solution for Maldini?

In all I'm hoping that we grab Dede and Ogbonna for defence, recall Didac Vila and have him overlap De Sciglio for leftback duties, buy Strootman in Midfield to replace Gattuso, grab one more quality player for our midfield, and up front we can either stay the same, or switch it up depending on who we sell.

Rumours are flying and people are going crazy at the moment, lets see what happens once the market gets under way. Currently anything and everything which is not confirmed by an official source (eg. Hazard to Chelski) is a false rumour until proven true.

Lighten up guys. Maybe we'll find some great young deals in the EUROs. Hardly any of us were rooting for Boateng ($8M?) or Nocerino ($0.5M) when they arrived, why not hope for more of the same?