Roma boss Jose Mourinho shared his thoughts on Roma’s expected transfer business in January.
The Portuguese technician spoke at length during today’s press conference about the club’s need for an additional defender to compete on all fronts for the remainder of the season.
“Our transfer business will always have to be adapted to what we can do financially,” said Mourinho. “Obviously I’m counting on it, I’m the coach. We are together in this and we share the same opinion, it’s not that I want one thing, Tiago Pinto another, the owners yet another. We all want the same thing.”
“Not that I’m jealous, but Man City paid €80 million for [Kalvin] Phillips and now Pep [Guardiola] has said it would be better for him to leave in January. So he’ll leave and they’ll get someone else.”
“Our reality is very different. We’d like one, two, three or four new players. Tiago too. And the owners too. We all want to try and improve the team, to make us better for the second half of the season.”
“However, it’s not easy for us to do that. I’ll be honest, if we bring in a defender in January, I’ll already be happy. But if you ask me if I’d like more than that, of course I’d like more. But it’s not possible. They’re working to try to give me options, to give me a defender.”
“But even with a defender coming in, we’ll have problems with our UEFA list. You could get a player who’s ineligible for the list, and if he is eligible, then others have to come off it. [Sardar] Azmoun and [Rasmus] Kristensen aren’t on the list. Should we add them? There are complications. I’d like people to understand that. I’d like people to be honest about our objectives when they say we should have been challenging for this or that. It’s ok, though.”
The main thing is that those of us within the club know what we want, even though wanting something is one thing and being able to do it is another. I don’t think we’ll be able to do anything more than bring in a centre-back who can help us out. We won’t have Ndicka on 3 January. We definitely won’t have Smalling on 3 January. Mancini is a booking away from suspension and is injured. [Diego] Llorente is hanging in there and keeps playing. That’s where our difficulty lies. We’ll see if it’s possible but I think we’ll be able to do something.”
