The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 84: Juven-Dus and the wild end to January

Well, things certainly took a turn between Episode 83 and Episode 84 of your resident Juventus podcast, didn’t it?

Last week, we were sitting here thinking it would be a very quiet end to the January transfer window — which we reminded a certain member of the podcast crew of. We thought that there wasn’t going to be any activity and that Juve’s roster was going to look a lot like it did for pretty much all of the season to date — which a certain member of the podcast reminded us all of, too.

And then all hell broke loose.

But, as we are happy to report, it broke loose in a good way.

You know, the kind of way where we went from no transfer activity to a whole lot of it and the end result was Juventus signing Dusan Vlahovic in the latest gut-punch to Fiorentina as well as Swiss midfielder Denis Zakaria on a very low-risk kind of transfer fee.

All of this wasn’t really in the even most optimistic of thought process a week or two ago. But now, after some quick transfer dealings from Juve’s front office, there’s a pair of new arrivals that very much can help turn the tide of two of the club’s biggest needs.

On this week’s episode of The Old Lady Speaks, we discuss:

• The takeaways from the week, which as you might expect center around the sudden flood of transfer activity for Juventus after three weeks of nothing in January.
• Breaking down the Dusan Vlahovic signing, a club — and Serie A — record amount of money spent for a player during the January transfer window.
• Breaking down the Denis Zakaria signing and just how much he will improve Juventus’ midfield both in the immediate and long-term future.
• Plus, you know, Zakaria arrives for a transfer fee that is much lower than he could have been sold for over the summer or a year ago.
• Juventus has a new No. 7 and an interesting hashtag to come along with it.
• Breaking down the two major names leaving Juventus this month, who just so happen to be going to the same team in Tottenham — Rodrigo Bentancur and Dejan Kulusevski.
• Twitter questions, including where Max Allegri could go now that he has a big-time goal scorer again and an improved midfield, just how much Vlahovic should we expect in his first few games with Juventus, the sudden shift to more of a work-in-silence type of transfer strategy and how we want things to look like when Juve do return to the field.

You can listen to Episode 84 of The Old Lady Speaks here:

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