Aymeric Laporte

[HelloCity]

Which players have I slagged off? I think Laporte is one of the best left footed CBs of his generation.

You just called him a 'dick'.

 

[alib]

Sad to see him go. Great defender and quality on the ball. Ridiculously low fee considering the current market. How can he be worth less than Maguire ffs?

 

[BringBackSwales]

Which players have I slagged off? I think Laporte is one of the best left footed CBs of his generation.

But only yesterday you said “he seems like a dick to me”? That’s hardly showering him with compliments?

 

[Keeper!]

Hardly binning him off after a couple of seasons - he signed for us the best part of 6 years ago.

With a bag full of medals, a bag full of cash and allowing him to go at reasonable cost to Saudi earn a huge, huge bagful's of cash

 

[Constantine]

With a bag full of medals, a bag full of cash and allowing him to go at reasonable cost to Saudi earn a huge, huge bagful's of cash

Being an unused sub in a CL final still stings!

 

[Keeper!]

Being an unused sub in a CL final still stings!

He still played his part in the campaign and has the medal to show.

 

[Constantine]

He still played his part in the campaign and has the medal to show.

Depends how He sees it. It happened in 2021 CL final as well.

 

[super_city_si]

Good luck to him. Been a great signing for us. injuries robbed him of any pace and he just cant recover in a high line and as many have already said he put it all on the line playing through injury when we had no defenders for the title in 2021.

last season can’t have been easy watching from the sides, but even though I imagine he was disappointed, he still cheered on the team and kept his counsel.

cheers Eric

 

[ninjamonkey]

For four positions? We more or less played with 3 defenders for the last half of last season.

In the run-in I felt that we could just about afford one injury in a few areas of the pitch. The worst though would have been Rodri injured at the same time as Stones. That's still a bit of an issue, but maybe slightly better now due to Kovacic being here.

We can't cover for every possibility though, we'd have to have a huge squad and that would bring other problems.

We didn't. We always played with 4 defenders, they just might not have neccesarily played in defence.

I'm not expecting us to cover for every possibility, but having 2 options for every position is the minimum you expect from any squad. Nevermind one that will play as many games as we will.

To be fair, we thought this last season and it ended up doing the exact opposite.

Walker, Stones, Dias, Ake
Lewis, Akanji, Gvardiol, Gomez

Just as strong as the options we had last season, if not stronger if you consider Lewis' development and Gvardiol coming in for Laporte.

Last season we had cancelo too and we all assumed gomez would be an adequate zinchenko replacement which he isn't and i suspect he won't play a single minute that matters at the back for us this season, him playing pre-season as a winger along with a change in formation I think shows pep doesn't see him as an option at the back other than to rest players in already won games.

We started the season with 7 options and then bought akanji last minute as we didn't think it was enough. Then even with akanji, we had a few injuries early in the season with walker, stones, dias and laporte missing a lot of games before the world cup which saw a substantial drop in form and forced pep into bringing in Rico Lewis from nowhere as a 9th option.

We can't go into the season with 7 defenders again and rely on finding a second Rico Lewis from the academy or playing rodri there again if we have a similar, not uncommon number of injuries at any period in the season.

It's an incredibly thin squad as is, not replacing any player we lose now is just asking for problems.

If we keep THB around then fair enough that could be the solution but him not even joining the pre-season tour probably indicates he isn't going to be integrated in.

 

[Keepingthefaithsince1976]

I'm sure the fee is at least £40m. 29 years old, 2 years on his contract, a proven multiple titles winner at club and international level, scores goals. Loved him at City, and his passing out from the back, turned defence into attack so well, gutted he's going but I hope he earns a kings wedge and enjoys the sunshiiiiine!!