His time at Inter is over. For the second season in a row, he’s getting injured every couple of games, and it’s just not sustainable.

We hope to sell him to Galatasaray for €15-20 million.

And remember that two years ago, offers of €60 million were received, but were rejected by the greatest sporting director of all time, Piero Ausilio.

His time at inter has been over

He’s also looking for a raise in any extension he would sign. It is a *little* bit of a risk because his role is so important in the 3-5-2 and hard to replicate, but at this point we have to move on from him. We’d be beyond stupid to give him a raise right now. The question though is what we do for a succession plan?

If we stick with the 3-5-2 as our primary formation, then I think we just move Zielu there full time, groom Sučić or Stankovic (I’d love to see some physicality in that role) as the heir, with Barella still as emergency cover. Then bring in a new 8 to replace Zielu. Buying a ready made Hakan replacement would just be prohibitively expensive imo.

But the other possibility is that we use the additional turnover in our midfield to shift to a 3-4-2-1. Part of the problem *now* with our 3-4-2-1 is the lack of physicality in our double pivots: you usually need a strong tackler/destroyer to patrol that area, and none of our current midfielders come close to fitting that bill.

Stankovic in for Mkhi/Frattesi helps there, like Pio he seems to have been fed plenty of protein shakes in our academy. But also replacing Hakan with more of a physical destroyer profile would give us the right blend of players to make it more feasible. Ideally it’d be somebody who can play as the 6 in the 3-5-2, but if they’re the Zielu replacement at CM on the 3-5-2 depth chart it wouldn’t be the end of the world.