Ozil Signs On, Some Thoughts on the Liege Friendly

I thought mourinho said gago would not be sold, so why are there still speculations of him leaving. One person for sure is leaving, mouhamadu diarra. He not in form and he keeps on getting injured, so his definitely out.

Drenthe is surely on his way out. Not even this injury plague to the other defenders is enough to convince the management to keep him.

Van der vaart might just be on his way out, of necessary.

the likes of lass and gago are not going because mourinho wants them.

Muna i think the Gago things are just rumors there is no way Mourinho goes into the season with just one DM in Khedira

2 offers have been rejected by Mourinho for Gago, one happened a few days ago, looks like Gago is staying. And it's not really such a bad thing, he is certainly improving.

and no Alonso is NOT a DM so yea there is simply no way Mourinho sells the 2 Diarras and Gago

Its interesting how Barcelona concern is "lack of depth" while Real Madrid concern is "too many players". Any practical ideas? :)

You guys are continuously putting Gago, lass and Diarra together on the transfer list. But is it possible to sell them all? You will only have Xabi and Khedira for holding midfielder position (regardless of the argument if they both fit there anyway). I am still not sure about this one. Unless if you buy new player there.

Still there will be 10 players competing on four positions -wings and forwards (assuming that Drenthe and Marcelo are Left backs). That's why even selling the previous three will not mean keeping the rest.

The most practical scenario for me: Gago will stay (You can hope he makes a Banega come back). VDV may leave. At least one of Canales, Pedro, Granero will leave (on loan?).

What Barca fan hope NOT to happen is Real Madrid selling Diarra,Lass and Gago and buying Mascherano. Loaning or selling VDV, Canales, Pedro, Granero and buying a target man (Llorente?) then buying a LB and offering Drenthe+cash to any club that is willing to sign him (alright, the last one was not a serious note).

you're right Ramzi there is no way all 3 DMs leave
loaning one of Canales , Pedro or Granero is out of the question though because the former two have just been bought and Mourinho highly rates them and Valdano said that no Spaniards will be leaving which rules out Granero

Drenthe though Has to go i dont care if we have to pay someone to take him
as for Buying a new left back Mourinho seems confident that Arbeloa and Marcelo could handle it and frankly so do i , Arbeloa offers good defending while his offense isnt all that good but with Di Maria and Leon or Ozil most likely playing in front of him we wouldnt need marauding forward

Could you have bought Ozil so that we wouldn't, even though our interest in him was never serious? I know that our respective clubs sometimes do that. Also, is Granero still in the picture for you? That's one heck of a logjam. Seems like a fire sale might be looming, with less that two weeks to go in the transfer window.

Comments about your canteranos are interesting, given that we are taking stick for (probably) promoting 4 canteranos rather than making any more purchases. Sometimes, no matter what a club does ....

Kxevin Mourinho is the one who wanted Ozil badly , he even called him to ask him to come to Madrid so i doubt that he is only doing to piss Barcelona off and i frankly think it was a good buy Ozil brings something to this team that neither Kaka or VDV do
Granero is in the picture because he can play a lot of positions and he is a canterano he fills up a quota

and i wish we were in your shoes ( i mean on the verge of promoting Canteranos ) but we arent stable enough to be worried about that right now , the first team has to be settled first when they play together for a year or two then we can think about the Cantera

According to Marca Valdano said Van der Vaart, M Diarra, Lass and Gago are the ones on the way out. I relly hope Drenthe gets switched for someone on this list.

Drenthe is not there because he is still count as a defender, which we currently can't afford to lose any. I believe that list by Marca is simply interprating Valdano statement of "none of the spanish player will be going". They are basically everyone that fall under the "non-spanish, not new signing & midfielder" categories. Won't read too much into it. I'm just not sure how many players we are going to sell.

As per reports we are going to be selling 3 players as Mourinho likes to have smaller squads and the prime candidates for sale are Gago, Lass and Diarra.

i know this is Random but last year Mesut Ozil had 33 assists ( yes thats right 33 ) in all competitions that includes the WC as well though

in other news el confidencial says that Mourinho wants to sell up to 4 players and the candidates are Lass, M.diarra , Drenthe , VDV and Gago

And how drenthe has been able to survive this long in Madrid remains a mystery???The pathetically hopeless and useless doofus has never made any madrista proud and yet continues to somehow evade the Axe??? what's more mystifying is how we've gotten rid of excellent players during those periods

I disagree James, don't know about anyone esle but I was very proud of his kung fu tackle.

ROFL

Also, we have just had the worst damned luck when it comes to injuries in the past few seasons, 3 injured center backs, seriously?

yeah, surprisingly so

Ronaldo,Ramos,Casillas,Xabi Alonso, and Higuain will not play vs Hercules on Sunday this is according to AS, Mourinho will rest them

AS are very bad for transfer news, but they seem to get their predictions right.

Ronaldo,Ramos,Casillas,Xabi Alonso, and Higuain will not play vs Hercules on Sunday.. http://www.as.com/futbol/artic...

Now that Valdano has said no spanish players are going, me thinks it's curtains on
Drenthe
Mahamadou Diarra
VDV

I'm secretly hoping it's Kaka instead of VdV, though. Agree about the rest.

kaka wont be going anytime soon

Corey, I still have problems commenting on the site, I even tried from another computer, and I end up with the same result. I need your help to sort this out.

I have no idea, I can only make 1/2 comments before i have to refresh, i'd like to know to Corey? or theoffside guy if he is still around?

Email me and explain the problem in detail and I will look in to it.

I didn't watch the game, how did canales play?

I still think Ozil was not necessary; we needed a Striker (Fernando Llorente anyone?), and a REAL Left back, too bad we still buy based on revenue alone

Ozil would be more useful than llorente and besides, llorente had a 30 million euros buy out clause attached to his contract. Are you saying we should have gotten him for 30 instead of getting a much better ozil for 16?

I may be saying this a lot but nationality plays too big a role in your judgement of players. You should know that there are a lot of non Spanish real Madrid fans like me who really don't care about Spanish players.

I'm guessing many of you do not appreciate the likes of ronaldo, di maria, ozil, gago,etc, just because they're not Spanish. Wow.

Well I agree that Ozil for 16 is a better buy than Llorente for 30, but I don't think there's anything wrong with using Spanish nationality as part of the process when comparing one player with another. Besides whatever quotas (6+5) UEFA might be trying to introduce in the future, Real Madrid is a Spanish club, as Ramses said. In my opinion, that means that it has a greater responsibility to represent Spanish fans and players. Sure, there are many fans, such as yourself presumably, that like to see Real Madrid as their own little fantasy football club, spending millions on international stars, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that either, but I tend to find that those are the fans that love the Galacticos ideal more than the club itself. And I am also non-Spanish (quite obviously) for the record.

Ryan, I made a comparism. Getting ozil for 16 or llorente 30 million. I never said getting ozil was the best of ideas but in relationship to acquiring llorente instead, acquiring the german was the right thing to do.
then about the whole Spanish thing, it's no hidden fact that sometimes the most loyal players are Spanish. Yes I agree. But I don't think real madrid's approach to this transfer market was unfair to Spanish players in any. I'm not watching real Madrid to watch the Spanish national team play, so i appreciate any player, Spanish and internationals alike. I never complained about getting canales and leon but rating llorente more useful than ozil just because he's Spanish is what I really disagree with.
So try to understand me before making your long and meaningless comments.

And just for the record, I don't like the Spanish national team, I only watch them, just like everyother country, to see how the madridistas are doing.

And I'll have you know that my two best players on the team are iker casillas and sergio ramos, so my dislike for the national team doesn't affect my love for real madrid. And it doesn't also stop me from appreciating what the likes of marcelo, ronaldo, higuain, lass, vdv, kaka,etc have done for the team.

I'm not Spanish either, but one must remember that Real Madrid is a Spanish club (THE spanish club). I supported Spain in the World Cup, and it killed me to see that the national team was 80% Barca (Not that they didn't deserve it, they definitely did.) I think that is why there is a huge bias for the Spanish players.

Also, I'm pretty sure most of us love the international players on our team. Hell, Ronaldo saved our ass for half the season last year, and Higuain is one of Madrid's favorite sons.

I, for one, just want to see more Rauls and Gutis playing on our team which is why I'm extremely biased for Canales and Leon.

When I said i wanted Ramos at CB it was because of Maicon not because everyone else is injured and this is last resort. Now Pepe being out for 3 weeks may not seem bad, but thats 3 weeks he will be behind everyone in fitness, same as Albiol and Garay.

And Sevilla lost today in a CL qualifier. :(

i don't understand why madrid landed ozil. i think they just think about pride and reputation when it comes to buying players instead of necessity.

go to sleep

Nice one man.It's the simp Heynow.

1st all, good article Jordan! From all the new signings, Khedira is the one who really and trully didn't impress me, he looks very average and I can't belive he is already seen as the perfect partner for Alonso...but the worst of all that is him being payd 5M a year!! Am I the only one who so far is ''disappointed'' with this guy? I think that Defour guy from Liege is at least 3 times better, great vision and work rate, what you guys think? Halla Madrid

Like I said to Jordan with Di Maria, he hasn't even played a league game yet, patience is the key.

Khedira played very well against Standard , he kept it simple , got dirty when he had to , i dont know what most of you are expecting from khedira if you expect that he is going to be dribbling past players , and make defense splitting passing like Guti then you have the wrong guy

so Pepe's out 3 weeks , Garay 8 weeks and Albiol 5 weeks , what the hell is going on with our Center backs ?

we can play Benzema as a CB, cuz may be he will succeed there??

I'd put some money on him HAHAHAHAHAHA

lol i think benz will come good this season , dont know why but i have a feeling that he will , when ramadan is over that is

i really hope you are right about him

The article by our new contributor Jordan (cheers mate) and your comments have been very interesting. All fuelled by the fact that there is such a duplication of players for set positions. (5 for DM for example)
I want Gago to go because he has never reached RM standand no matter how professional and dedicated he looks, I will never rid the image of him running round Anfield like a headless chicken from my memory banks. Ditto Drenthe, that cross yesterday, that concussed the poor guy in row Z summed him up, speed, crossovers no pause, no thought. However since the only player with a decent market price is VDV, he's the one I see on the way out. I think it 's telling that Mou says 'I won't loan Canales out for even one day' and ' VDV will have to show his worth to fight for a place....
I think León will be first choice when Madrid play the big teams as he really gets stuck into to defending duties which we all know is what Mou favours. And from what I've seen of Kedhira he looks like the new Gago (early days I know)

My one fear is that Mou will resort to a 'park the bus' strategy against some higher level teams which would require a lot of centrally focused players to clog up the midfield. That's just a guess really and I hope that isn't his plan.

Unfortunately, when you have seen the comings and goings of this team for so long, as labomba and I have, then these sentiments often seem pessimistic but they are only patterns. Khedira does seem like the new Gago, the old Gago still is unfulfilled potential, Drenthe is utter garbage, Van der Vaart is getting the shaft, if everyone is unsure of Canales then please watch Racing Santander last season, five DM's and four AM's are just ludicrous given two strikers, one left back etc. All is not lost, but the market policy just looks so shoddy compared to other teams. And what happened to the cantera players? They have yet again faded into the peripherally, as I assumed they would.

all our ridiculous policy started when perez came to power the first time, we actually never recovered from it, and it is still going on in his second spell.
i have been watching the team since the late 80's(i guess i am the oldest guy here),i have been around in the worst era(1990-1994) and yet i have never been so pessimist in my life before the season starts like i am now, we have no soul in the team, a side from Casillas and Ramos, we got no one to fight for the white shirt.
we really turned into a team full of over paid egos. and even the lousy Drenthe doesn't want to leave.
our management is to blame for everything bad happened to us.
i wanted to give Mourinho the benefit of the doubt,but if he really thinks that Gago and Drenthe are actually good players,then he is as bad as pellegrini,Shuster,and every other coach that kept them.
what kind of a coach that keeps 5 CM's and 4 AM's on a team,and only 2 attackers????
are we balanced??? how the hell he will keep everybody happy???
i know everyone is kinda of optimistic in this new season,but the unbalance we are in is going to take us down.
the Cantera is facing even a more darker era than the previous years
and the problem is that everyone is just putting there heads in the sand,
i wonder what will happen if we actually failed to win anything this year???

Valdano said that there will be sales in the coming days
and i sort of support the idea of only have two true strikers because not only CR can play as a striker but also we never play with more than one striker so having 3 means that one of them never plays , i'd rather have two and then give a cantera striker a little bit of minutes here and there instead of buying another established striker

and aside from Casillas and ramos there are also Granero , Arbeloa who are canteranos , and higuain although not a canterano would die for this shirt so would Marcelo

Higuain would DIE! for the shirt.. Really?

i echo zizou here. i actually seemed to have noticed higuain doesn't seem like the boy anymore. hint of arrogance is very evident. maybe he is now a senior player compared to the rest, but i prefered the young smiling boy higuain

i havent noticed arrogance at all - no idea where you're getting that from - sure he's grown, but only for the better.......i bet you think puppies are cute until they grow up into dogs - am i right? ;-)

you dont think that Higuain is a Madridista through and through ?

well i do hope he stays his full career here, so i would hope is a true Madridista, but i don't think even Casillas would die for Madrid, unless you was being metaphorical ;-)

haha come on man of course i didnt mean literally , i meant he would give his all everytime he steps on the pitch

actually, di maria will probably cost the same as ozil and khedira, if all players stay for 6 seasons, di maria will cost 12 million( 2 million per yr), ozil will cost 30 million(5 million per yr), khedira will cost at least 30 million(at 5million per yr) so added up di maria= 37 ozil= 45 khedira= 44

Great buy but i am very upset that this season, we haven't bought any lb..
and it would be harsh on VDV to sell him, but probably good for him..

If not for his injury coupled with pelle's departure, i am sure filepe luis would have been the first buy..

After signing Ozil, Valdano said "We view him as the last arrival for the new season."
So Arebeloa and (an improved)Marcelo will do the LB job unlike last season!

i don't know if i was watching the same match as you guys or not, but De Maria was the best of the forwards in the 2nd half. i think all of you guys just forgot that he played on the right, which is not his place, and on the few times he drifted to the left he was very dangerous and should a lot of talent.
i know most people talk about his price, but he is a real gem, and you guys seem to attack him with no reason, i feel only me and Andres think of him highly.
give him a break,and you will see what he has to offer us.
now regarding VDV, i think he will stay, and i think the one who will be bound to leave is Kaka, remember that when January comes, Kaka will not be cup tied, so clubs will try to get him, specially if a big club is suffering.
Drenthe should be given to any club for free,we should even pay clubs to take him, he is useless.
we will loose 1 or 2 of our CM's before the transfer window close.
and no one noticed the back heal flick De Maria did yesterday??? i know you guys don't like him but it was damn awesome.

I didn't like him, because he was from Benfica as I support FC Porto in Portugal, but the guy is full of potencial, even blind eyes would see that! So... what we, as true madristas, should do? The ones who criticise him, were the ones who criticised CR7's arrival and said KaKa would be better but now scream his name everytime he touches the ball, everybody was so passionate about kaka and ceptical about Ronaldo. The same will eventually happen with Di maria... KaKa must be seeking for ya luv now! Let's support the team and not be the reason why this club forgot was stability is... Halla Madrid!

best comment so far..

I see no comment about the wicked spin Di Maria put on the ball in his offside goal, the Goalkeeper thought the ball was going out and it spun in viciously.

that was super trippy

di maria needs to elarn how to use his left foot and i am definetly happy for this new signing despite what people say...i see ozil a notch above kaka right now...kaka isnt on form and we cant wait 2-3 years for him to get back on form cause believe me, real madrid plays hardball and kaka isnt the kid to play hardball... he is just a little happy christian boy (please dont get offended im christian, just calling it how i see it)

Di Maria IS left footed!

haha my bad i ment di maria needs to learn how to use is right foot...all he uses is his left foot,, it limits him so much,,, he isnt going to be effective till then really

So this is totally random but for the 6 signings we made we have spent 77 mil , that's only 17 more than we spent on Kaka and 13 less than what we spent on ronaldo
Crazy isn't it

haha nice. that makes us feel a lot better about this year than the last :)

LOL yea

It's good to know that Vdv is wanted by most of you now, my 1 man Vdv rant last season has caught on :)

although I may be wrong in my rant about Kaka coming back from his injury and succeeding now that Ozil is here :(

Bassam did you see the game yesterday? what you think of it...

Nice post, don't think Di Maria was bad though, he impressed me for the first time since the rumors started flying around, he'll come good, he has some great tricks up his sleeves. Loved his dribbling skills and ball control.

If Mourinho says, "The most important thing for Van der Vaart tonight was to do things well and to show his coach he is ready to play for this team. Rafael did well and he has the Club's and my respect for everything he did last year. It isn't a problem to have Rafael and Ozil on the pitch at the same time. They could offer solutions to the team together." I am not really sure, who'll be shown the door then, I sincierly hope it's not Van der Vaart, or maybe Mourinho's being a lying bitch once again, like he was with the Carvalho & Ozil signing.

I really hope that Ozil does well for Madrid, his price tag isn't that much, so if he does better than Di Maria (I think he will) everyone will say what they've been saying, that Real spends millions for NO REASON.

How the hell does Real pay that much for Di Maria? OMG...That's like WTF?!

Let's hope that Ozil-Khedira don't let up the "hype" and prove my point that you don't have to brake Real's bank to be a good player.

Agree he was very expensive, but bear in mind traditionally - especially under Perez - Madrid don't pay for players based on football worth alone. Significant consideration is given to the revenue the player will generate for the club through shirt sales and endorsement

Nick , i assume you're a bayern munich fan , how much did you spend on Mario Gomez again ? 30 mil is it lol so i wouldnt talk if i were you

gomez was coming off a great season with Stuttgart... and Stuttgart ripped Bayern off big time. As for Ozil and Khedira... I hope you Madridistas will be happy, because you got two of germany's stars... two difference makers for their previous teams. its good for them IF they FIRST CHOICE. they will learn how to play with and against Spanish players.

there are very few clear first choice players at Madrid. I can only think of 4 and one of them is goalie

this situation kinda reminds me of the one we had with mcmanaman under del bosque. but im sure mourinho is no one's puppet. i do hope van der vaart will stay on.

the van der vaart's pic suits the current situation, he looks determined. =P

What did you guys think about Lass? Like the last few games he was a total mess; lacking mentality, accuracy and pace. A real shame because he was great early last year. I'd rather see him go than Mahamadou.

I still think he is the right partner for alonso, because he is fast and good in the tackle and if alonso is gonna play higher he needs someone fast to protect is back IMO, but somehow he lost confidence and it's a shame... bcuz I know that if he leaves, he'll be great in his next club!