Remaking Roma’s Roster: Who Survives Monchi’s First Summer?

While we all love AS Roma, to follow this club is to live in a state of constant dissatisfaction: with the club, its players, its leadership and, hell, even its clothes. So why do we keep coming back? Is this self deprecating attitude part of the fun? Are we really that sick? Whatever the case may be, it’s par for the course with Roma; we’re always looking ahead to what’s next, or more correctly, what’s wrong.

Nearly every summer, transfer pundits, armchair GMs (we’ll use the American phrase here) and fans alike speculate as to who Roma should sell and who they should keep. Usually we see a handful of changes in either direction, mostly revolving around fullbacks because, well, because this is Roma and that’s a riddle they’ve yet to solve, but this time something feels different.

Not different in the sense that we’ll see continuity this summer (heaven forbid), but different in the sense that we might see a top down reconstruction of the club. Monchi is a man whose reputation precedes him; he scours the earth for the game’s next great talent, using algorithms and spreadsheets as his divining rods and, more often than not, he flips them for massive profits, so to expect him to sit on his hands is unrealistic.

How that last piece of the puzzle translates to his time with Roma remains to be seen—they have slightly more financial clout than Sevilla—but the first point is really the most salient. Monchi gets his kicks constructing a squad, and for the first time in his career, he’s the new addition, so will he be satisfied with the status quo, or will he want to remake the entire squad, including the manager, in his image?

While it is extremely unlikely and impractical to completely reset the roster, a substantial change to the first 15 or so names on the team sheet isn’t beyond the pale, so I’ll ask you, out of Spalletti’s top 15 to 18 players, who would you keep and who would you forsake?

If we consider Spalletti’s nominal rotation as follows, who survives the Monchi culling?

Keepers (2): Wojciech Szczesny, Alisson Becker

Defense (7): Federico Fazio, Kostas Manolas, Antonio Rüdiger, Emerson Palmieri, Mario Rui, Alessandro Florenzi, Bruno Peres

Midfield (4): Daniele De Rossi, Kevin Strootman, Radja Nainggolan, Leandro Paredes

Forwards (4): Edin Dzeko, Mohamed Salah, Stephan El Shaarawy, Diego Perotti

Remember, these are just the guys Spalletti has actually, you know, used this season—Clement Grenier and Gerson are just mythical beasts for the sake of this exercise, but that list speaks volumes, doesn’t it? Once Florenzi went down, this club had effectively no depth beyond Paredes and Perotti; everyone else was run into the ground.

So out of those 17 names, who would you keep and who would you cut? Factor in age, finances and talent, but we want to know how you see this summer unfolding.

Have at it!