. @LordMoloch inspired me with his must stay / must go thread which is really a must read. It got me thinking and I want to hypothesize what our possibilities are this summer. https://twitter.com/LordMoloch/status/1294531197876482050?s=20

Let’s start with the fact that we have no idea what the financial situation is of our club now that covid has run amock with our seasonal income.

So what follows is a lot of guesswork. Our situation could be better than I think.... or it could be a lot worse.

First of all we know we have a couple of players incoming:

Pjanic
Trincao
Pedri
Mattheus Fernandes

(for the purposes of this exercise, I will ignore that we signed mattheus fernandes for fuck's sake).

Dislaimer:

In the last tweet I wrote the word "fuck."

You're gonna see that a lot...

Players we can sell. This does not mean I would sell all of the players. I am removing some of the options of who we know the board won't sell (Araujo), or who we can't sell for money (Umtiti and Dembélé because of their injuries).

It could be we get a bit more for some of these players, it could mean we get less. Coutinho, for example, might not even bring us any money if the only takers want him on loan.

Yes, we are fucked.

If we sold everyone on the list we'd have no LB's, no RB's, no 9, we'd be one CB short, and only 1 backup forward while depending on Fati to start. We are also ~200m short in income due to covid19, so we still wouldn't have much money for signings.

Yes, we are fucked.

Next season, assuming that among some of the players we managed to sell were these three plague-ridden individuals we had to send packing before their bubonic sores infected everybody in the Barcelona metropolitan area (Suárez, Rakitic & Umtiti) we’d have this lineup.

We are fucked at 9, fucked at LB and fucked at RB, a position at which we cannot afford to be fucked bc they cover for Messi on defense. We'd have to depend on Ansu Fati, because Dembouz is either injured or leaves the team with one defender less alongside Messi.

We are fucked.

I still think it would be an improvement, just because we don’t play Suarez, however some of the same weaknesses still exist. I can also see the argument for raising extra money by selling Griezmann, but that money will not be enough to get a 9 and we are still fucked at RB / LB.

But sure, maybe if we sell Griezmann we can unfuck ourselves at RB/LB and/or either not sell Todibo or get a 4th CB and/ or find a cheaper 9 to do better than Griezmann does.

Oh boy, we are fucked.

Best thing in my limited wisdom would be to keep Todibo, switch to 343 with Messi on top of a diamond and hope this works out. It allows us to sell some of our fullbacks to help pay the bills. It looks risky af but it might be fun.

I am not convinced however that our front two are good choices to play in front of Messi. Griez can make forward runs but he is better with a reference point in front of him and Ansu might still be too raw. Dembélé likes to be on the ball, not run into space. Same for Trincao.

Again here also I could see the argument for raising extra money via a Griezzy sale, but how much would we get and who do we sign? Also, we are even more short of a CB if we go three in the back, and Lenglet might not be the best choice in this setup anyway.

Another risk is that selling fullbacks leaves us without a backup plan...

Option 3. We rebuild w/o Messi. Either trade or sell. I can see us getting Gabriel Jesus or Lautaro for him. I am not saying this is what we should do, I am simply entertaining the option and since it was discussed earlier, I am visualizing the outcome.

Griezmann plays RW. Not as good on offense, but he makes up for it to some extent by playing defense as well. Our situation at RB becomes a bit less problematic, because Semedo/Roberto are less exposed.

It is a more balanced team. We are less fucked at one and a half positions at the cost of replacing Messi with Griezmann. It also rejuvenates our squad at the #9 position which helps to set us up for the future.