carl_feedthegoat wrote:WTF has his age got to do with his ability ?
Stop looking for excuses that don't exist..he was good enough and Dortmund certainly recognized this.
All PeP had to do was play him a few minutes here and there to convince him , like he did with Foden...but he didn't....he went out and bought MehRez instead.
Sometimes its best just to fuckign recognize a fuckup from our hierarchy when theres a fuck up instead of looking for non existing excuses.
The reason this happened was the Sanchez interest we had and was well known.
What was then a big issue with the team and is still now is finishing, so who was better and likely to be more reliable at this? It’s not even close in terms of rating unless you’re lying to yourself, and effectively that’s why he left for Dortmund. We were also expecting to get Alexis for a fee far below his value due to his contract situation.
No one expected Sancho to become this good this fast. I don’t even think Dortmund did.
We then pursued Mahrez for his finishing as well and this has led Brahim to go as well.
So you have to blame Pep for not pursing a world class striker at the time for a log-jammed attacking unit with big questions about its finishing capabilities outside of Kun, who was also possibly looking like he was leaving after the next season. It was a very tough decision and bottom line is we offered him a very nice waged contract to stay and he said no.
Really it was about a 16/17 year old Sancho versus World class Alexis and after Pep's first season the pressure to win trophies was much higher so risking this chance at Alexis (and later Mahrez after the issue of finishing persisted) on unproven teenagers over him seems rather risky to me.