Chose to join Southampton, seemingly instead of us. He's only played once for them so far though in the League Cup, when supposedly he had an error-ridden game against Sheffield Utd. He actually played more minutes for Torino last season than Nkoulou, and at least based on whoscored stats performed marginally better, which is quite a concern given that he's currently not deemed good enough for a poor Saints side, while we'll probably be needing Nkoulou to make an immediate impact in the PL.
CB is the outfield position where players tend to be most capable of performing at a higher level for longer. Not true in all cases though of course, but 32 isn't too bad for a CB; certainly less of an issue than having a 34 year-old Kucka in CM. Weren't you keen for us to sign a 33 year-old Cahill before he went to Palace, for instance?
I see the club have learned from the leaked transfer notes incident and put a blank piece of paper in front of him for the staged signing photo.
That would mean that Nkoulou effectively fell out with Walter Mazzari. He wouldn't be the first person.
Yes - because I deemed Cahill to be a class operator at that time. And his first year at Palace showed that.
Tbf Southampton's defence hasn't been their problem for them this season, especially as they've had a much tougher start to the season than us. If Nkoulou is comparable to Lyanco, I'd actually be encouraged by that as Lyanco would have been an upgrade on basically everyone we have
That's been true for Saints' league games, but just look at Lyanco's pass at 1:00, even WTE would be embarrassed. It was only his first appearance for them, so some slack can be cut, however he was generally considered to have played badly.
https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/s...ulou-excited-playing-watford-claudio-ranieri/ Not especially hard-hitting journalism, but he says that the interest only came recently, so it doesn't seem to be a deal in which we had our feelers out for well in advance. He also says he has no idea when his debut will be, so I take that to mean that he probably won't be available for the weekend despite the hectic schedule for our other defenders?
I guess from his comments that we’ve only gone for him in reaction to Sierralta + Kabasele’s injuries, rather than having a long-term strategy for strengthening the defence. Agree that he’s unlikely to be ready for a few weeks having missed out on pre-season.