 On the 5th of March 2019, Ajax would begin their Magisterial Champions League run with a 5-3 aggregate comeback victory against Real Madrid. Ten Hogsmen would go on to take down the Italian Giants' Juve before narrowly falling to Tottenham in the semi-finals. No matter the result, that team is legendary to this day. But one player is remembered maybe more than everyone else from that team, Frankie Deion. You might not have seen him on the scoresheet or in the highlights after the match, but if you watched that game and you knew ball, you knew that Frankie Deion was the heartbeat of that team. Ever since he left the Dutch Giants, they've never been the same. But ever since he came to FC Barcelona, they haven't been the same either. This is the story of Frankie Deion's dangerous situation and why he may regret the decision he needs to make now for the rest of his life. I've been a huge fan of Frankie for a very long time and I have fought for him when most of the Barcelona fanbase wanted to sell him. He just plays beautiful football and looks very good when he has the freedom to push forward. I even made a video praising him a little while ago saying that he could be one of the most important players to this squad and was looking great at the beginning of the season with Gavi in the midfield. With Gavi and also to be fair a decent Oriole Romelu on the pitch, they could cover and facilitate for Frankie's powerful runs and so Frankie looks like the boy who walked out there every day with Ajax and performed. After years of English pundits saying that he never lived up to that 19 year old player he was at Ajax, he started to look really, really good again. However, now three months after I made my first video on him, I think I have to reevaluate my stance. Today, Frankie is the second highest paid footballer in all of Europe, earning 37.5 million euros per year. That's 11 million euros more than the third highest paid footballer in Europe, Robert Lewandowski, ignoring the fact that we all found out that Robert Lewandowski is the third highest paid footballer in all of Europe. Wild. Frankie is making too much money for how he and this team is performing. In my first video, I said that Frankie could prove himself worthy of his salary if this team can perform in the Champions League, because I didn't believe the squad could perform without him. But now I see that I think the more important player was Gavi. The team did fall off a little bit when Frankie went out injured, but not to the level that it is at now without Gavi in the squad. Clearly, Gavi is the guy the team needs and the team cannot survive with basically just Frankie running the back line of this midfield. I don't care how amazing he can be or how much I like him as a player without a solid defensive midfielder next to him. He will never be unlocked. So this means that you'll probably have to continue investing this insane salary into him on top of another 50, 60 million euros, at least for a decent CDM. And I don't know about you, but I'd much rather take that 100 mil and throw it at him, Boppe or Holland and then figure out a pivot position after that. Frankie really doesn't have a great reason to forgive or renegotiate his contract and give up a lot of these wages. After all, that's what Bartomeu agreed to pay him. If it were me and YouTube were asking me to give up some of my earnings so that they could pay off a new shinier creator, I don't think I would want to do that. But to be fair, Frankie is also making 2000 times more than me. I did the math. So however, there are two ways for Frankie to solve some of these issues. And the first one is to stop defending. It seems a little bit counterintuitive, but bear with me because Frankie's work rate defensively right now is very poor. His decision making is poor and his positioning is also pretty poor. So why not completely release him of that ability? Well, because you think that there's no one to fill that position in the squad, but not exactly. This is where Chaby and Frankie can work together. Frankie is one of the club captains. They need to work together to find other solutions to the defensive side of this midfield. And I don't think Oriole Romayu playing is the solution to this because Frankie Deong just doesn't seem to feel fully confident and trust him defensively. And that makes perfect sense. The guys very inconsistent. But this is where you try out Christensen at CDM like everyone has been saying for so long. With Kubarcy playing so well, you can kind of confidently pair him up with Kunde and Araujo and hope that they can handle that backline. So that gives you the space and the manpower to try him at CDM. I think it's also worth with Christensen playing CDM to drop Gundo, put Pedri in his position and put Firmin Lopez at left wing. After all, Firmin Lopez has played at left wing before, but he can also deputize that role that Gavi used to play last season. And he can bring that fight, that intensity that really no one else in this squad has without Gavi there, especially with Choual Felix in there, too. So with the intensity of Firmin, the ball playing ability of Pedri and the defensive solidity, hopefully from Christensen, maybe that'll release the Frankie De Jong that we saw at IX as a 19-year-old and that we saw a little bit of earlier in this season. Now, if ever, is basically the only time to test that. Chavi is already going to leave, so why not go for it? I think it could make the team better, but also might make Frankie a little bit happier. And then maybe that convinces him to renegotiate his contract or something. I don't really know. I'm just speculating here, but it's entirely possible that if Frankie sees this team succeeding a little bit, he'll be more motivated to be a part of it for longer. However, if an experiment like this doesn't work out, I could see it encouraging Frankie to want to leave at the end of this contract, which means we might be out not only the 37.5 million euros that we'll have to pay him this season, next season, end of the season after that, but also the 85 or 86 million euro transfer fee that we originally paid for him. And he might just go off on a free and to lose one of the most expensive midfielders of all time. In that way, someone who still has a very high value to a lot of teams could financially destroy this team. I mean, I don't know if that's possible because it might already be financially destroyed, but you get the significance of that. It's a big deal. We can't lose him like that. I would like to think that Barcelona is going to try to address this pivot problem this summer. So even if Frankie doesn't make the decision to see success now and renegotiate now, maybe he'll only need one more year to decide that because Barcelona will have a pivot that makes him feel confident to play the way we want to see him play. But that's a big risk to take to still have to pay him 37.5 million euros when Gundogan's contract's about to go up and so is Robert Lewandowski's. That's really not sustainable for this squad. If we're going to end up getting stuck with his massive contract until it runs out and losing the player, we might as well get rid of him now. If he refuses to resign a contract, I would try and force him out of the club. I know it's really hard to do because he's already refused to do that, but that's really our only option to try and force him out. And this could open up a lot of buying power for Barca to facilitate some new signings and start a bit anew. This isn't a perfect solution. I would much prefer him staying here, resigning his contract, spreading out over another three or four years and letting him shine again when we do eventually get a pivot. But it might end up coming to this. I just can't stand my struggling club paying this guy 37.5 million euros a year any longer. It's truly a highway robbery. If we were competing for the Champions League and basically every single trophy we were in and we were at the top of the tier of world football, maybe I understand someone getting paid this much at that point. But that is not the level that Barcelona is on. So I don't care how big a deal they are, they have no right to be playing anyone 37.5 million euros unless it's Killian Mbappe. Otherwise, especially Frankie Dayong, a poor Frankie Dayong, no way is he going to be worth that much. At the level we're at with our financial troubles right now, I can't let my bias and appreciation for the way he plays get in the way anymore. He is not worth 37.5 million euros. However, we still have a problem. We agreed to pay him that. Now, I'm not totally upset with Frankie for not giving up this money that was agreed to him by the ever-brilliant Bartha Mayu. But I just hope he can find it somewhere in his heart to forgive it or push it off for a few more years. Because our club is really struggling right now and they could really use a few more euros to help facilitate some new signings. And Frankie Dayong can provide the squad with that. It's just going to take, it's a big ask from him. If he stays at Barcelona and they aren't able to figure out a way to make it work, he might regret that if he extends his contract, especially he'll regret it even more. But on the other hand, if he decides to leave Barcelona and help them that way, he might also still regret that because what if he leaves, they get a bunch of money and they can now spend it in different ways that they didn't expect to before and it improves the side a lot without him and they succeed without him. He'll probably regret that decision as well. The harsh truth about Frankie Dayong is that the future is going to be very, very messy. So I just hope that you're buckled up and ready for a bumpy ride. If you enjoyed this video, why don't you check out this video about Kunde and the mess that's going on with him or check out this video about whatever YouTube thinks you might be interested in. But thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.