4 | Tijjani Reijnders - 2025/26

bluwes said:
Were you one of those calling Rodri, Plodri in his first season.
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It’s a fair point, but Reijnders has come to City as Serie A’s “Midfielder of the Season”, so it’s probably not a surprise that supporters have been disappointed with his performances to date. Apart from revelling in the oceans of space afforded him by the division’s worst team on the opening day, he’s been the very definition of lightweight. Hopefully he just needs time to adjust to the kind of physical examination you always get in this league. At the moment though, there’s fuck all sign of that adjustment happening
 
People mention 'Plodri' as the go to example of a player starting off slowly. He's not the only one though. I remember a point when everyone wondered what Gundogan did, and that only really changed when he started adding goals to his game.

Now don't get me wrong, goals are a pretty major thing in the old game of football! But I think everyone would look at his performances differently once grabs a couple more goals. It won't change everything else he's doing, but it will all be looked on far more positively.

Kind of feels somewhat correct but also over-simplistic to say that in a lot of people's eyes, scored a goal = played well, didn't score = didn't play well.

But.... While he could become very effective for us, the jury is certainly out. Both he and Marmoush are late developers in football terms, and it does make me wonder a little about how good they are - maybe they need the perfect environment in terms of tactics etc to perform at their best.
 
bluwes said:
Were you one of those calling Rodri, Plodri in his first season.
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Rodri was only 23 when we signed him. He was inconsistent and had some poor games early doors and was still a bit skinny for his age (he developed his size and strength a lot by the time he was 25).

I remember Rodri struggling (despite his cracking goal) in our defeat at Norwich and at home to Wolves, yet he still had cracking games early doors with performances against Brighton, Watford and Everton… better than Reijnders has shown in his early games, and he’s 27.

Rodri was the best player in the world at 27.

Reijnders needs some big sessions in the gym and do what Rodri did going from this to this:

IMG_2747.jpeg

But even then how much better is he going to get as a 27 year old? 27 year olds we’ve signed like Yaya, Fernandinho, Otamendi, Walker, even Mahrez with 12 goals and 12 assists in his first season despite people saying he struggled in his first season (he didn’t, he just wasn’t quite as consistently good as the likes of Agüero, David Silva and Walker around him… a 2018-19 Mahrez would probably win our POTS these days), usually hit the ground running because they’re already bang in their prime.
 
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.db. said:
Rodri was only 23 when we signed him. He was inconsistent and had some poor games early doors and was still a bit skinny for his age (he developed his size and strength a lot by the time he was 25).

I remember Rodri struggling (despite his cracking goal) in our defeat at Norwich and at home to Wolves, yet he still had cracking games early doors with performances against Brighton, Watford and Everton… better than Reijnders has shown in his early games, and he’s 27.

Rodri was the best player in the world at 27.
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Reijnders has 27 caps for Netherlands at the age of 27, and didn't make his international debut until 25. It doesn't scream "elite talent".

It doesn't mean he can't be useful for us, but I think in relying on him game in, game out, we're expecting too much of him unfortunately.
 
.db. said:
Don’t forget we’ve also needed to sign a number of other players as part of a big rebuild (after already spending loads in January) so couldn’t spend too much on individual players.

If we only needed to replace Gündoğan, fair enough but in 2025 we’ve needed to replace Ederson, Walker, Akanji, long-term Stones and Aké, McAtee, De Bruyne, Álvarez, a back-up for Rodri and a left back. We’ve spent £393m in 2025 and that’s without replacing Walker.

Even with that, we wanted Wirtz but he didn’t want us, nowt we can do about that. Alex Baena was always going to Atlético (he actually cost less than Reijnders but wouldn’t have played much anyway as he’s had appendicitis). Pedri isn’t leaving Barça. Madrid won’t be selling Valverde. Musiala signed a new contract at Bayern. Rice wouldn’t come to us from West Ham so he’s not going to leave Arsenal to come to us. Bellingham didn’t want to sign for us. We sold Palmer. Szoboszlai only just signed for Liverpool last year and they’d never sell him to us. And the idea of signing Fernandez from the Rags gives me an itch, plus they’d never sell him to us anyway.

The best weren’t available or didn’t want to play for us, so we have to look at less than the best. Unfortunately, that means we don’t have a top player to replace Gündoğa but even the player we did sign wasn’t cheap when you consider all our other expenditure.
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That’s a very good and detailed post. I’d be wondering why on the back of winning the treble we were the best team on the planet we were untouchable we also had the best manager in the world all these top players started to turn their noses up at us. I’m probably wrong but to me it seemed that the board were like we are MCFC the best in the word if you don’t want us on the money we are offering we’ll go elsewhere. Other clubs come in with a better offer and we stand still while they improve vastly. You can also add the same to the players we had rather than trying to convince them to stay our attitude was if you want to go well then see you later.
 
He's definitely in the 'disappointing' camp at the mo - I thought this guy was going to be the next Kevin De Bruyne but sadly showing no examples of that this season... :-(
 
Mcfc1.9.8.0 said:
That’s a very good and detailed post. I’d be wondering why on the back of winning the treble we were the best team on the planet we were untouchable we also had the best manager in the world all these top players started to turn their noses up at us. I’m probably wrong but to me it seemed that the board were like we are MCFC the best in the word if you don’t want us on the money we are offering we’ll go elsewhere. Other clubs come in with a better offer and we stand still while they improve vastly. You can also add the same to the players we had rather than trying to convince them to stay our attitude was if you want to go well then see you later.
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Might sound utterly mental but I actually think period of success might’ve made us less attractive for top players. We’d literally done it all, completed the lot. Whereas you get an Arsenal who haven’t won anything in the past 20 years and players have an opportunity to carve there name in the history books there. Players care about stuff like that.

Of course i might be sprouting bollocks but I do think there is something in that. We’d literally completed football, perhaps the only way was down.

Still not excusing how poor that window was post treble because as you say, we on top of the world but still couldn’t attract the likes of Bellingham and Rice.
 
I think he’s a player that will play great when we’re on top of games.

That’s useful to have because if we do find some form it’ll turn 2-0 wins into 3 and 4-0s and that wins titles - but right now we’re in the trenches trying to get something going and he’s not the guy that’ll turn that around.
 
.db. said:
Even with that, we wanted Wirtz but he didn’t want us, nowt we can do about that. Alex Baena was always going to Atlético (he actually cost less than Reijnders but wouldn’t have played much anyway as he’s had appendicitis). Pedri isn’t leaving Barça. Madrid won’t be selling Valverde. Musiala signed a new contract at Bayern. Rice wouldn’t come to us from West Ham so he’s not going to leave Arsenal to come to us. Bellingham didn’t want to sign for us. We sold Palmer. Szoboszlai only just signed for Liverpool last year and they’d never sell him to us. And the idea of signing Fernandez from the Rags gives me an itch, plus they’d never sell him to us anyway.
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You could add Caceido to that list. I think we were linked with him at one point.
 
Shazza458 said:
Might sound utterly mental but I actually think period of success might’ve made us less attractive for top players. We’d literally done it all, completed the lot. Whereas you get an Arsenal who haven’t won anything in the past 20 years and players have an opportunity to carve there name in the history books there. Players care about stuff like that.

Of course i might be sprouting bollocks but I do think there is something in that. We’d literally completed football, perhaps the only way was down.

Still not excusing how poor that window was post treble because as you say, we on top of the world but still couldn’t attract the likes of Bellingham and Rice.
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I’ve thought that myself at times tbf
 
Shazza458 said:
Might sound utterly mental but I actually think period of success might’ve made us less attractive for top players. We’d literally done it all, completed the lot. Whereas you get an Arsenal who haven’t won anything in the past 20 years and players have an opportunity to carve there name in the history books there. Players care about stuff like that.

Of course i might be sprouting bollocks but I do think there is something in that. We’d literally completed football, perhaps the only way was down.

Still not excusing how poor that window was post treble because as you say, we on top of the world but still couldn’t attract the likes of Bellingham and Rice.
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Madrid seem to manage it okay.

Think it’s more to do with Pep going soon and players not knowing who the next manager will be.
 
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