CDT Confessional, A Reader Mailbag: July 2015 Edition

You asked, we answered. We received a fair amount of responses for our debut CDT Confessional, and while we hope to make this a semi-regular feature, we'll keep the first one somewhat brief. Today's questions focused largely on, you guessed it, transfer rumors and speculations, as well as some CDT demographics. For the first edition, I turned to our newest contributor, vote4kevin, for some assistance.

So, without further delay, let's pull back the partition and handle these confessions.

If you were in Saba's place and were forced to buy 1 player from Lazio, which would you choose?

Benattore

Kevin says: I actually had to search Lazio's roster for this one, and then immediately deleted my search history. I'd have to go with Miroslav Klose because he's one of the only respectable footballers on Lazio due to his pre-Lazio history. At the very least he could be a backup striker/mentor to Sanabria.

Bren says: It's hard to argue with Klose who, at age 37, still led Lazio with 13 goals and finished third with six assists. I addressed what makes Klose so damn near impossible to stop nearly two years ago and the song remains the same; he's just so damn efficient.

Beyond Klose, I've always been an admirer of Antonio Candreva; he's such a balanced and dynamic threat, adding a 10 goal, 9 assist campaign to his record did nothing to dissuade my opinion of him, while Felipe Anderson will probably earn Lazio a huge payday when they inevitably sell him to Chelsea next summer. Stefan de Vrij was also a nice pickup for them last year.

In the same vein as the last, you have a €100m budget and the full backing of the club but you can only sign 1 player, who would you sign?

Benattore

Kevin says: Raheem Sterling! Just kidding, this one's a no-brainer for me: Paul Pogba. Not only would it hurt Juventus to lose Pogba, but Pogba would then become the lynchpin of the Roma midfield now as well as in the future.

Bren says: Wow, great question. If you're throwing down a world-recordish sum for one player, it needs to be someone who contributes in all facets of the game. So, as much as I'd love to drop a hundred mill on a goal scorer, I'd need a little more diversity in my nine-figure player, and he'd have to be relatively young to live up to that price tag.

So, simply because he's three years younger than Sergio Aguero, I'm going with Eden Hazard. He's fresh off a year in which he scored 14 goals and contributed nine assists, all while averaging an absurd 4.8 dribbles per match. Hazard is a threat all over the midfield, creates for others, can beat any defender on earth off the dribble and has an eye for a goal—he's the ideal building block for any club.

Curious to know opinions on youth prospects and when we can expect them to join the first team.
Also what do you guys look like? Pictures ;)

Richard.

Kevin says: Lorenzo Pellegrini, captain of the Primavera squad last season, was probably Roma's best Italian prospect in its youth system. Pellegrini recently moved to Sassuolo this summer on a permanent basis, but it's rumored that Roma has the first right of redemption should Pellegrini continue to progress. Roma would be smart to buy Pellegrini back soon, as he looks like he'll be able to settle into first team, Serie A football eventually.

Bren: I suppose the one that always intrigued me the most was Valmir Berisha. I mean, if you're the next Zlatan, you're going to draw some eyes, right? I've found some conflicting information on his loan/transfer to Cambuur in the Netherlands, but it looks like it's a one year loan with an option for a second, so who knows if we'll ever actually see him, but he is intriguing nonetheless.

Then there is, of course, Alessandro Nesta's nephew, Gianmarco.

As far as what we look like...I don't know. Ive never actually met any of the other CDT crew in the flesh, but in my mind Jonas looks like a shorter version of former NBA player Rik Smits.

Do you think Roma will sell Romagnoli when suitors reach our demand (around 30-35m euro)? And why did Sabatini even placed a price tag on him?

JB

Kevin says: Unfortunately, I do believe Roma will sell Romagnoli when suitors start bidding around the 30-35 million euro mark, even though it will probably cause riots. The recent pattern of outgoing transfers suggests Roma will sell. I have no clue why Sabatini felt the need to place a price tag on Romagnoli, it's idiotic to even consider selling one of the club's best youth prospects; it seems Sabatini will sell anything that isn't nailed down to the floor at Trigoria if he's offered 30 million euros for it.

Bren says: Ugh, I honestly have no idea. I'd like to think they recognize the value of an incredibly young and incredibly talented defender....wait a minute, never mind, forgot about Marquinhos...but money talks, doesn't it? For me, it's not so much an issue of the club forgoing its youth or losing its soul, its simply that this whole fiasco could have been avoided if they didn't sink money into Seydou Doumbia and Victor Ibarbo in the first place. So I hope we don't blame Edin Dzeko for Romagnoli's departure, when it was the short sighted purchases of those players who really set the stage for Alessio's exit.

You posted not so long ago that web traffic from Indonesia was the second highest. I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of web traffic for countries to see where other fans are from.
Charts are very much welcome.

Stigmata

Ask and ye shall receive, the following chart/map shows the percentage per county of CDT's page views over the past year. As one would expect, nearly half our traffic comes from North America, followed by the United Kingdom, Indonesia and Australia to round out the top five

In terms of actual cities, CDT is most popular in New York City, Toronto, and London, each of whom accounted for at least three percent of our traffic last year, while Jakarta, Chicago, Stockholm, Sydney and Helsinki all registered at least one percent of page views.

This concludes our first CDT Confessional, a lot of you submitted several questions and we'll use some of them in ensuing posts, but please feel free to submit questions/comments/concerns for the CDT Confessional at chiesaditottisbn at gmail dot com, on Facebook or Twitter @chiesaditotti.