Nathan Ake

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Marvin said:
If the money is sat in the bank, I would use it if it improved City. I agree with many other fans, the guy is not the world's best defender. When you think of players like Thiago Silva, or Baresi, even Boateng when he was good at Bayern, he's not in that league, but on the other hand he would improve City and make us stronger and at the end of the day, that is how you judge a transfer, does it make you better?

Putting him on a par with the world's greatest defenders might be a fun academic exercise but it's not really relevant in terms of improving City's side. Can we wait 2 years for the next Maldini to emerge, and who is to say that City would be able to land that man. We don't seem able yet to beat the Barcelona's and Real Madrids to the very best players.
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Really?
Aguero
De Bruyne
Bernardo...
 
denislawsbackheel said:
Really?
Aguero
De Bruyne
Bernardo...
Click to expand...


Great as they have been, will they really billed, hyped as the very best prior to joining City, generally we were billed as over paying for unproven average players and inflating the market type bollocks in all those cases.
 
Marvin said:
If the money is sat in the bank, I would use it if it improved City. I agree with many other fans, the guy is not the world's best defender. When you think of players like Thiago Silva, or Baresi, even Boateng when he was good at Bayern, he's not in that league, but on the other hand he would improve City and make us stronger and at the end of the day, that is how you judge a transfer, does it make you better?

Putting him on a par with the world's greatest defenders might be a fun academic exercise but it's not really relevant in terms of improving City's side. Can we wait 2 years for the next Maldini to emerge, and who is to say that City would be able to land that man. We don't seem able yet to beat the Barcelona's and Real Madrids to the very best players.
Click to expand...

The issue of 17 Foreigners + Home Grown has less impact in Spain / Italy / Germany. 1 They have better players to start from and 2 the best are concentrated in fewer clubs. When you think RM and Barca pretty much have the pick of the Spanish national team as Home Grown where as the English national team has far less quality and what there is then gets split across the 6/7 decent English clubs. RM / Barca / B Munich / Juve would never take a player like Harry Maguire as they can fill there squads with much better home grown players - the pick of the national teams. We have a shallow pool and many more decent clubs that need decent English players.
 
hello said:
Great as they have been, will they really billed, hyped as the very best prior to joining City, generally we were billed as over paying for unproven average players and inflating the market type bollocks in all those cases.
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Sorry but that's bullshit. Aguero was the biggest young striker in the game, everyone wanted him which is why it was such a big coup for the club to land him - and we only did so because Atletico and Real Madrid were at war.

KDB was the best player in Germany by a mile, just 12 months after the Germans won the world cup with Bundesliga based players and recognised as one of the best players in Europe.

Bernardo was only behind Mbappé in terms of recognition and hype as part of the team which dominated that season's headlines after going deep in the CL and winning the French League.


None of them were under the radar signings or considered unproven except by the likes of Paul Merson, and both Aguero and Bernardo were seen as cheap deals.


They were players who were just a step below being world class household names, known by anyone following European football, but maybe not by the bloke down the pub who thinks the Premier League is everything, and that's where we do most of our best business. Rodri is another similar player.
 
Unlike the rags our (Pep’s!) ethos is to sign good young players with potential and coach them into great players.
Ake fits this profile perfectly and I would much rather we signed him than get ripped off for McGuire at double the price.
Sincerely hope this deal goes through as I feel this guy has the potential to be a great replacement for VK.
 
Delphinho said:
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Whenever these things happen I usually think that if KDB did have knowledge of a (so far) secret deal, he'd not be liking stuff about it on social media.

I remember Ferdinand once spoke about how the United players would talk about rumours of players coming in and unless there was a personal relationship between incoming player and current player, none of them would have a clue about what was going on until the last minute.
 
hello said:
Great as they have been, will they really billed, hyped as the very best prior to joining City, generally we were billed as over paying for unproven average players and inflating the market type bollocks in all those cases.
Click to expand...

Aguero was
 
denislawsbackheel said:
Aguero was
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His was sought after for sure, but I seem to remember much of the speel at the time being about Juve et al not willing to meet Atletico's valuation. I think the point the other guy was making is that as good as our signings have been we've never really gone head to head with one of the old g8 style European clubs in a transfer deal and come out on top
 
hello said:
His was sought after for sure, but I seem to remember much of the speel at the time being about Juve et al not willing to meet Atletico's valuation. I think the point the other guy was making is that as good as our signings have been we've never really gone head to head with one of the old g8 style European clubs in a transfer deal and come out on top
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The thing is you generally don't really hear much about it, other than rumours, because it's all done behind closed doors with the agents. As I understand it, by the time a bid goes in, it's generally confirmed which club the player wants to go to. When was the last time you heard about any two big clubs fighting it out publicly for a big player? I'm sure loads of clubs could have triggered Rodri's release clause, but they're not going to bother without the go ahead from his agent. It's likely that he was informed of who was interested, picked us, and so all of the other clubs left it.

But having said that, I definitely remember strong rumours about how Bayern really wanted De Bruyne before he came to us.
 
Gaudion M said:
The issue of 17 Foreigners + Home Grown has less impact in Spain / Italy / Germany. 1 They have better players to start from and 2 the best are concentrated in fewer clubs. When you think RM and Barca pretty much have the pick of the Spanish national team as Home Grown where as the English national team has far less quality and what there is then gets split across the 6/7 decent English clubs. RM / Barca / B Munich / Juve would never take a player like Harry Maguire as they can fill there squads with much better home grown players - the pick of the national teams. We have a shallow pool and many more decent clubs that need decent English players.
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Very true, i think the club have every intention of using our full quota of league associated on club associated where ever possible but i do not believe we buy enough top youth from our competitors at the right age to fill that quota
As for Ake he would still be at Chelsea if he would play LB as he was not good enough at LCB
 
hello said:
His was sought after for sure, but I seem to remember much of the speel at the time being about Juve et al not willing to meet Atletico's valuation. I think the point the other guy was making is that as good as our signings have been we've never really gone head to head with one of the old g8 style European clubs in a transfer deal and come out on top
Click to expand...

I'm With Stupid said:
The thing is you generally don't really hear much about it, other than rumours, because it's all done behind closed doors with the agents. As I understand it, by the time a bid goes in, it's generally confirmed which club the player wants to go to. When was the last time you heard about any two big clubs fighting it out publicly for a big player? I'm sure loads of clubs could have triggered Rodri's release clause, but they're not going to bother without the go ahead from his agent. It's likely that he was informed of who was interested, picked us, and so all of the other clubs left it.

But having said that, I definitely remember strong rumours about how Bayern really wanted De Bruyne before he came to us.
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WIth Aguero he wanted to go to Real Madrid and had asked to be sold. Atletico Madrid were furious about it because they and Real had formed a truce 10 years earlier after Raúl moving from Atleti to Real Madrid caused a massive friction between the clubs which Perez was happy to break for Aguero. On top of that, just a few months earlier Aguero had pledged loyalty to Atleti and signed a new contract.

After that came out publicly, shit hit the fan in Spain and Aguero couldn't stay at Atletico because the fans turned on him, and selling to Real was almost impossible from a PR point of view. We capitalised by offering Atletico a club they could stomach selling to and someone convinced Aguero of "the project".
 
Gaudion M said:
The issue of 17 Foreigners + Home Grown has less impact in Spain / Italy / Germany. 1 They have better players to start from and 2 the best are concentrated in fewer clubs. When you think RM and Barca pretty much have the pick of the Spanish national team as Home Grown where as the English national team has far less quality and what there is then gets split across the 6/7 decent English clubs. RM / Barca / B Munich / Juve would never take a player like Harry Maguire as they can fill there squads with much better home grown players - the pick of the national teams. We have a shallow pool and many more decent clubs that need decent English players.
Click to expand...
Add to that the fact that Premier League clubs are all stinking rich, so they can charge much higher prices because they don't need to sell.

I'm not convinced that Ake would be anything other than a utility player for us covering multiple positions. He's obviously tidy on the ball, but I worry about his aerial ability, especially as that's already a weakness of ours. I was just watching his performance against the rags earlier last season where he actually had a pretty good game, made an important block and showed some good anticipation overall. And then in the last minute, he goes for a fairly simple header unchallenged, misses it, and it drops to Rashford who scores. Obviously it's unfair to judge a player on one performance, and one mistake, but people are praising him for his organisation of the Bournemouth defence. They conceded more goals than anyone other than the bottom two. I know a lot of that's down to their style of football, but it doesn't inspire confidence. Perhaps Pep sees something in him, perhaps even in midfield, but as a commanding CB for a title winning team, I can't see it. Having said that, I'm sure Pep knows what he's doing.
 
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