By Danny Penza
Beppe Marotta and the general Juventus mindset towards making transfers in January is pretty simple.
Whenever Juve's director general talks about it, the words out of his mouth are almost always something along the lines of "If find a deal we like, we'll pursue it."
There's nothing all too difficult to figure out in that paraphrasing of Marotta.
It's been this way ever since he came to Juventus.
The January transfer window is something that Juve see as an opportunity to improve the squad — with caution when it comes to finding the right opportunity that suits them.
They obviously look for deals.
Why wouldn't they, right? But the way they go about things, it isn't with the same kind of fashion and aggressiveness it is during the summer window.
Maybe that has to do with the amount of time there is between the window opening and closing. I'm sure that plays a major role.
I mean, would you rather potentially have a couple months to try and negotiate a deal or 30 days? I think I know which one I would pick.
That's probably why, when it comes to bringing in potential game-changers, the only real immediate starters who have been brought in during the January window under Beppe's watch have been Andrea Barzagli and Alessandro Matri three years ago.
With that, we get to this: Juventus and the left wingback conundrum.
Well, maybe not a 'conundrum' per se, but something to think about. Don't get me wrong, I like Kwadwo Asamoah quite a lot. He's good at what he does and has awesome hashtags on the Twitter machine.
(Maybe one outweighs the other, I'm not sure.) But it's not exactly a secret that he's better as a central midfielder. That's where he made his name, that's where his future should be.
But is that where he should be...now? The January transfer window has been about addressing minor needs for Juventus, not major ones in the past under Marotta's leadership.
Instead of the major moves that a lot of us have desired the past few Januarys, we've seen the Simone Padoins and Federico Pelusos enter the squad.
Not all that impressive, right? At the same time, though, Juve's options off the bench at both right and left wingback was never going to resemble something like what Chelsea's attacking midfield options on the bench — Oscar, Juan Mata and André Schürrle — against Arsenal this past Monday.
It's not like the options are plentiful, which will obviously play into any kind of move Juve will or will not make.
There are players out there who are possibly going to be available, no doubt.
But the ultimate question when pursuing somebody to possibly play on the left wing remains: Will the player Juve might sign be better than Asamoah as a wingback?
Or maybe we should just listen to Andrea Agnelli about a couple of things when it comes to any kind of potential transfer activity when the winter window opens in a week and change.
Uhhhhhhh...dammit. So much for that. Maybe this is all some food for thought, though, right? Maybe I'll just copy and paste this come June. Sounds like a plan.