Anyone competing for places in our starting team is going to be facing world class competition, City are the best team in the world.The context matters, though.
Nunes has competed with world-class midfielders. When Pep started Ake vs Arsenal, he competed against Stones, who was still recovering from a shocking 19/20 season, and Garcia. We had practically won the league by the time Ake started vs Chelsea and Newcastle.
I remember that Ake had an underwhelming first season. Nobody would have cared had we sold him after that season. Fortunately, as often happens, he improved in the 2nd season and was largely outstanding in the next 2 seasons.
Anyone competing for places in our starting team is going to be facing world class competition, City are the best team in the world.
With respect, whether you think Ake was 'underwhelming' is irrelevant, (personally he's impressed me throughout), but Ake has had the trust of Pep, which Nunes hasn't.
I said Pep only played Nunes against the lesser teams, even if you add on their 8 point deduction Everton are firmly in the bottom half of the table.Garcia (who benched Stones in 19/20) and Stones were anything but world class at that moment. It wasn't difficult to trust Ake over them back then.
We had an utterly important game this season immediately after the club world cup, namely vs Everton away. That game was supposed to show whether we could compete for the title. We had to win there. Pep started with Nunes instead of Kovacic. So, even though Nunes didn't convince him in that game, he must have had Pep's trust to feature in a crucial game like this.
Ake was underwhelming in his first season, get over it.
Thought Portugal were in it? If all our squad though take 4 weeks off after the 2 summer tournaments we aren’t going to have many with any pre season anyway.Missing out on the euros when they've picked a handful of players who have spent all season having a kick about in Saudi is odd and just another example of Martinez managing to sabotage what should be one of the favourites for the competition.
It's good for us though as it means he'll be back in pre-season day 1 giving him the maximum amount of time possible to learn from Pep. That should help him more than anything. If he has a good pre-season and is doing what Pep wants him to do, he can easily find himself starting the early games next season as others return late and then he gets the chance to be a significant part of the team.
Gareth, is that you?Can't understand why he was bought to be honest. His career record wouldn't have suggested he was a Guardiola player to me.
They are. Nunes hasn't been selected for the squad.Thought Portugal were in it? If all our squad though take 4 weeks off after the 2 summer tournaments we aren’t going to have many with any pre season anyway.