Aston Villa defender Clement Lenglet has seemingly confirmed that he held talks with AC Milan over a loan move during the January transfer window.
Milan were expected to sign a new central defender during the winter mercato as they were battling the long-term injuries of Fikayo Tomori, Malick Thiaw and Pierre Kalulu which had decimated the department.
Matteo Gabbia did return from his loan at Villarreal has helped to steady the situation, but there was still the expectation that another player would arrive and Lenglet’s name was repeatedly mentioned by various different sources.
Now, the Frenchman has done an interview with Gianluca Di Marzio in which he spoke about a number of topics from his beginnings in football to the present day, and he reflected on the season so far.
“I arrived on the last day of the transfer window and had an injury after a week that kept me out for ten days. At the time, the team was playing well, so it wasn’t the moment to change for Emery: I understood and accepted it,” he said.
The report from Di Marzio adds that various clubs came in for him during the January window with the intention of interrupting his loan at Villa, with Milan among them.
“I wasn’t playing regularly, so I wanted to find a solution. My priority was to play, and at that time it wasn’t possible, so there were contacts with other clubs. Then unfortunately Pau Torres got injured, and my time came. When I started playing, plans changed. But I like Serie A.”
What if we were to get a DM.
Given we spent 30m on CdK then Chuk and that Kimmich appears to be available at 35m.
29 yrs old. Adli and Musah now have someone to watch and learn from while we strive for a Scudetto.
Joshua Kimmich makes 10 mil a year net, which will make him the highest paid player in serie A.
If Kimmich actually leaves Bayern, he is not coming to Milan or serie A.
that is 10M net.. 20M gross.
Yep. So that illustrates the need to carefully manage finances.
Now consider a 4 yr deal.
36m capital expense to make the math easy. 20m gross annual as you say.
29m per year.
If we bought a 60m mid at 14m gross per year (roughly Leao money) that is 29m per year.
Now consider Kimmich taking 2m net less per year because of the 4 years. That is 25m per year.
So the question becomes what are we willing to pay for the pieces that complete the puzzle. IMO those are DM and ST. Instead of thinking only in terms of the upfront capital expense or only the wage what if we think total cost of ownership for projected impact.
Kimmich would make us significantly better immediately. If Musah or Adli develop well in next two years due to Kimmich being in the team then our long term outlook is also improved. If both excel we recoup some of the TCO by selling one of them.
In short, today Kimmich makes 10m. We need to know what he wants to make and what project he wants to be part of for the next phase of his career. And we need need to pay a bit more in order to gain both immediate and strategic impact.
My $0.02 (and pipedream of course)
Why would Kimmich even want to join Milan? He’s a rockstar in bavaria..
Atm we gotta find a dm that a) will either hit their peak and is kinda cheapish, b) an exp dm that still has a lot to give but is kinda searching for a revival or something. Idk jorginho comes 2 mind..
As for st I’ve no idea what they gonna get. They should go for šeško imao..
Luuk de jong might be an interesting exp option, seems he found himself again in Netherlands