Oscar Rodriguez move from Real Madrid to Villarreal getting nearer.

Marca, who always seem to have their ear to what Real Madrid has going on, have reported that a deal for Madrid midfielder Oscar Rodriguez is coming closer to completion for Villarreal. You can read previous information about this deal here.

According to Marca, the starting point of negotiations is 20m Euros, which frankly is entirely too high. They do point out that depending on Madrid’s percentage of future sale or buyback clause, that number could be lowered, so I anticipate that if this is going to get done, it will be for around 10-12m Euros.

This move could be interpreted one of two ways. Either Oscar is being brought in to help fill the role of the departing Santi Cazorla, or Villarreal does not intend to purchase Zambo Anguissa permanently and he is being brought in to fill that position. I think Oscar is ill suited for both. He’s a superb free kick taker and is daring from range, but I don’t really see him filling a primary ball carrier role for a team as good as ours nor do I see him as the key cog in an open play attack. You can see that very simply in the following two images:

footballslices.com

footballslices.com

Now, with a new manager coming in, the system will naturally look different than what it did this year, but as you can see, Oscar didn’t even press as often as Santi Cazorla did this past year, and he wasn’t nearly as efficient a dribbler as either outgoing player. He also didn’t create very much.

Put simply, if you take away Oscar’s set piece goals, he doesn’t do enough to be a starter on a Europa caliber team. If he’s not going to be a starter, then we need to ask whether he is worth spending 12m on when that money could be used to either acquire Zambo full time or get the CB we need. Time will tell if this deal goes through, but I must say I don’t really like the look of this one.