That just doesn't make sense given that Gnonto is in the last year of his contract so he would have his pick of clubs if we waited. The Gnonto deal seemed to be one that Orta wanted to get done regardless of whether we bought someone else too but it seemed the stumbling block was the transfer fee - possibly because Orta has a budget for youth players.Cjay wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 5:02 pm From reading Marsch's comments Gnonto felt like a club target to sell on.
Not someone Marsch really wanted or felt was someone we needed now.
Marsch referred to him as someone "I think we think highly of".
Suggests to me this is Orta and his young player strategy.
Marsch specifically said he wasn't Premier League ready.
Pretty clear the club have panicked and signed Gnonto as a last resort bringing maybe a plan forward 12/18months.
From what Phil said they literally ran out of options and had to do something.
It's a very poor situation they have allowed to occur and forced on Marsch and Wilfried Gnonto as well tbh.
Clearly talented but he now has to become that Premier League option immediately which is likely far to soon.
Ideally he likely needed time to settle and adapt and adjust.
He won't get that now .
It's a poor situation to bring a teenage kid into but we will need to support him.
It came accross more that Marsch probably doesn't see him as being premier league ready in terms of starting eveyr match as a striker. Even if Marsch didn't rate him what credentials has Marsch got for spotting young talent? Did Red Bull ask his opinion before signing players, very doubtful. As we have seen with most of our buys this summer they have been players Marsch has worked with previously, we're not seeing Marsch wanting us to sign a 17 year old that he has personally spotted, just to buy players Red Bull have let him work with.
The only reason I see for the lateness of the Gnonto deal is that it probably looked like we weren't going to be able to agree a fee with Zurich. Maybe as other deals collapsed it meant we had more money to play with so we were able to find common ground on the fee but I don't see it as a panic signing just that we weren't going to pay over the odds, but just like with Raphinha he suddenly became available at a price we found acceptable.
