Where should Robert Lewandowski go?

It’s now looking highly unlikely that Robert Lewandowski is going to be able to agree to a new contract at Barcelona. He’s one of the club’s highest earners with a wage in the region of €25m, and given La Liga’s cost cap constraints, Barca would like to free up that money to make some other moves.

Fabrizio Romano says that Saudi and American clubs are already making their sales pitch, while Florian Plettenberg says Porto is making a surprise offer.

If Lewa wants to ride off into the sunset and enjoy a glorified semi-retirement where he continues to make a huge wage to play football at a lower level, he’s certainly earned the right to do that without getting mocked for taking it easy too early. He’s scored double-digit goals in one of Europe’s top leagues for 15 consecutive seasons. He probably got robbed of a Ballon d’Or due to France Football opting not to award it in 2020, and Lionel Messi getting the sentimental one a year later for his Argentina accomplishments. Please enjoy this absolutely beautiful shot chart from his 2020-21 season.

But I happen to think that Lewandowski is still an extremely effective striker, even if he’s not quite good enough to start every game for Barcelona and be their top earner. If this guy wants to continue playing at Champions League level, he can absolutely do that. He’s still getting into great shooting locations and finishing. He doesn’t quite have the physicality that Hansi Flick’s press requires, but he’s not walking around and skirting his defensive responsibilities. He’s a little slow, but he’s still fit.

If he’s always wanted to live in LA or New York, sure dude, knock yourself out. But I’d much rather watch Lewandowski keep banging in goals for Milan or Juventus into his 40s. I think he still can, and I selfishly hope he decides to do that instead.

More transfer rumours

• The big one going around right now is Anthony Gordon to Bayern Munich for around £75m. I’m not quite sure why Bayern would do that while Luis Diaz is doing so well, but all the rumour merchants insist it’s close. Except Sebastian Vidal, who says it’s not actually that advanced.

• Another one for the “if Tottenham stay up pile,” it’s Dortmund striker Serhou Guirassy. While he’d almost certainly improve them, historically paying big fees for 30 year olds has not been part of Tottenham’s strategy.

• Brighton are being linked to Hoffenheim left winger Bazoumana Touré, who isn’t exactly as dribbly as Brighton winger targets usually are, but has a key pass chart that looks like this.

• The big Arsenal rumour of the day is that they’re interested in Arda Güler, who would cost somewhere in the region of £90m to get out of Real Madrid. I know it hasn’t been the best year of Martin Odegaard’s career, but is that the position where Arsenal fans really want to see the money spent this summer? In any event, I don’t think he’s one of the many players that Real Madrid want to sell.

• Every summer we get rumours that big clubs are sniffing around Jarrod Bowen, only for him to decide that he likes being The Man at West Ham instead of a rotational piece somewhere else. But the Hammers’ poor season has Liverpool, Everton and Newcastle thinking this might be the year he moves. I’ll believe it when I see it.

• Saying that “two English clubs and a Bundesliga side are monitoring” a player means that no one is actually interested yet and his agent is yapping to get his name out there. But I do want to talk about Mateo Biondic, who moved to USG from the German 4th tier this winter and has kind of been lighting it up. I think he’ll probably stay there one more year and then move if he keeps these numbers up, but it’s a very cool story. This guy rocks.

• Basically a copy-pasta from last summer, Atalanta CM Ederson is available for £40m and Man United are interested. If this is true, I think they would have just done it then? Perhaps it wasn’t possible to get Ugarte out the door previously, and now it is. In any event, I like Ederson and think he could improve United’s midfield.

• Monaco and Sporting are both playing my favorite transfer game show, “Did We Get Caught Bag Holding?” Francisco Trincão and Maghnes Akliouche are both solid players in their mid-20s who were exceptional last season, got linked to big transfers, and ultimately were not sold. This season, they’ve still been pretty good but not as good.

• And now, they’re being aggressively linked to every rich club you can think of in the press. In both cases, I feel like a sale will be made, as these teams have determined these guys have hit their peak values and will not get them any more money in the future. But also in both cases, I think they’re going to go for £10m less than they would have last summer.

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