ChicagoBlue
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 10 Jan 2009
- Messages
- 16,156
Every year there are top, top players who are linked to top, top teams, and (it seems to me) there are plenty of people who think City need them. Some, maybe, but absolutely not all, and we forget that until about a year and a half ago we had to pay over the odds for anyone even remotely considered a “top, top player!”The thing is, we didn't sign Kaka, or Sanchez, Hazard, or Pogba, or DiMaria, or Falcao & now Sanchez (again). There is a strong argument that none of those would start, in our strongest, best balanced, 11.
Some of the other players we absolutely had to sign over the years, are doing nothing now.
Yet there were few people on here saying we had to sign Harry Kane, a few years ago. Not many on here were chasing Jesus or Sane before we were linked.
And many would have insisted on us signing some piss obvous older player instead of playing them & Sterling together.
One thing Pep has done, and what Txiki and Khaldoon clearly agree with, is identify young, hungry, skillful, forward looking players he feels fit his TEAL MENTALITY, which is the MOST ESSENTIAL ELEMENT in his total football concept. Players talk about the TRUST needed to play this way. KDspoke of every player in his position, and not only every other player knowing where that player is supposed to be, but then covering for that player when he is caught out of position by a breakdown in City’s attacking play....which is why we have seen KDB cleaning up at RB this season!
Pep is a Chemistry Professor. To do the work he wants and conduct the experiments he has laid out at the feet of Mansour’s, he needs the correct elements, in the correct amounts, with a few catalysts. He provides some of those catalysts and his top, top players provide some of them.
I don’t think Sanchez is one of those key elements, but I don’t think he would have blown up the experiment. However, when he tried to change the experiment with new demands, that was a killer move. One thing is for certain, had City bent over to provide everything he and his agent appeared to want, I think it would have harmed some of the other elements in the experiement, and we don’t need that!