PDL Predictions

By: cathal | June 6th, 2009

PDL (aka Piazza Della Liberta) posted a great article on their website yesterday looking at current movements within our mercato and assessing the likelihood of various moves. Nothing in Rome is set in stone at the minute and it changes with every second. For this reason, it is very useful to have a summary like this. Here’s what I think of it all.

First thing’s first, we ended the season with twenty-nine squad members. Now, many of these guys were fringe players and some were Primavera members promoted up the ranks for a few minutes play but still, this is too big of a squad. 22-25 players would be ideal for me and most managers I would think. We are not far off that number until you add into the equation all the individuals we loaned out last season; all nineteen of them. See a problem, anyone? If we don’t sell quickly, we will have forty-eight players on the payroll. That’s perhaps twice as many as Lotito wants. Certainly, objective number one in this mercato is sell, sell, sell.

The media have touted eight candidates for sale; Carrizo, Kolarov, De Silvestri, Cribari, Ledesma, Dabo, Pandev, Rocchi. That would leave the squad size at forty but what is more problematic is the fact that these eight players are eight of our most important squad members. I want to hear rumours that some of our outsiders are on the move, not integral first-teamers. That’s another cause for concern but I wouldn’t get too panicked as yet.

If you add the fifty-two players linked with us to the forty current players the media say we will have next year and assume they will all sign, we will have a squad size of ninety-two. This is why we need to take everything that is said with a pinch of salt, particularly this summer as the majority of what the media is spewing out is unfounded rubbish. Out of all this speculation, the Blerim Dzemaili, Javier Pastore and Fabian Vargas rumours are still going strong. The latter of this group is a solid, if unspectacular option, a player who could boost us in the centre of the park, add a bit of depth without igniting a spark. The other two are talents, Blerim was wasted at Bolton but shone at Torino while Javier may just be the next Zarate-style buy. With so many rumours around that are ultimately false and will go nowhere, it is necessary that we keep our eyes on the stronger ones because amid all this hype and propaganda, deals may well be slipping under our radars. Forza Lazio!