De Bruyne?

FanchesterCity said:
Just because they are key players in the team doesn't provide evidence of how big a signing they were originally. Robinho was our biggest (in terms of PR) signing at that time, and he didn't work out.
The fact remains, Yaya and Silva are both bigger names in the footballing world since joining City. Yaya was a bit of a coup (although many questioned if he was an overpriced Barca castoff at the time) - he WAS a fairly big deal coming from Barca, but he was still an outgoing Barca player!, and Silva was a nice little Spanish player on the fringes of the Spanish team, but possibly too small to make it in the PL (as was the view then). WIthout a shadow of a doubt, both have increased their profile since joining.

The pool of players that would improve City of 6 years ago was much larger than the pool of players who can improve us now. The closer you get to the top of the tree, the harder it gets to find even better players, and that is what makes it harder for us.

I also did not say it's any harder for us that other elite teams, I said it's hard for us NOW than it was then. Back then we weren't an elite team. That's why I said we are now competing with a different set of clubs for the calibre of player we would like. Once we start doing very well in Europe, things might get easier, but until then, if we want the world's best players to join us, they need some serious coaxing. We are still a 'project' on the European stage, whereas domestically, we have gone past that stage.

If, as you suggest, things are not harder, but ought to be easier for us, then we do indeed appear to be struggling to improve in a number of positions on the pitch.
This whole subject came about over criticism about how we 'seem' to be failing to land targets when in the past we managed to land them. I don't believe we are failing (we've landed 1 of our 3 obvious big targets with a second one seemingly imminent, and brought in a couple of others too), and I'm arguing are previous targets were from a wider pool of players we might have bought. The pool has severely diminished due to us being a far better team now then we were then.
Click to expand...
Whilst being key players in our team isn't exclusive,the points I made about each individual's position at the time should back up why they were still elite calibre then as they are now.

It's not a fact, and it's blatantly incorrect that a player with 91 International caps (c55 of which were obtained prior to joining City) was "on the fringes" of the Spain squad, had question marks over his ability and that Toure was an over priced Barca cast off.

This reminds me of the guy on talksport who'd never heard of either of them and quite rightly had a City fan make him look more than a little ignorant.

I think the crux is, I disagree with your last paragraph - although I'd absolutely concede that the standard of footballers in certain positions seems to be lacking: mainly defenders. I don't believe we're suddenly only going after a calibre of player above 2010 Silva/Yaya.

a. Because I'm not sure there's a level above them other than the Messi/Ronaldo bracket and
b. Because we're still signing Fernando's/Delph's/Sagna's - which means we're not exclusively chasing that top tier player and therefore our pool of players shouldn't be so small and thus our transfers be so difficult.
 
manimanc said:
Didn't they say something similar about sterling?
Jealous fuckers the lot of them.
And slightly off topic but the rags haven't even bid for pedro but sky sports news and talkshite must repeat the some thing on the hour every hour that utd are in pole position to sign him xnd pedro wants to sign for the rags.
Spot the difference? ?
Click to expand...
Has pedro also said he only wants to play for utd lol.
 
FanchesterCity said:
Revisionism at its best.
Robinho was a coup, Tevez was a coup, Toure was a high profile signing. Silva just wasn't the coup you're suggesting. He's turned out to BE an amazing signing, but there really wasn't any media frenzy over Silva. He was a prospect, not an established world class player.
Click to expand...
Before we signed him he was an automatic attacking starter for Spain, the best team in the world. This didn't happen because he improved with us, it was already happening.

Just looked and he had over 50 caps for Spain (not some average side, Spain!) at 24 years old before he left Valencia. I'm not sure if Pogba can make that many by 24 with France (will France play over 25 games in the next two years?) and France are not anywhere near as good as Spain when Silva was winning all those caps while at Valencia.

As for Euro 2008 Silva started:
v Russia
v Sweden
v Italy
v Russia
v Germany

He didn't "warm the bench" in the semi, he played the whole game.
 
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FanchesterCity said:
Revisionism at its best.
Robinho was a coup, Tevez was a coup, Toure was a high profile signing. Silva just wasn't the coup you're suggesting. He's turned out to BE an amazing signing, but there really wasn't any media frenzy over Silva. He was a prospect, not an established world class player.
Click to expand...

Calling Silva a prospect is completely absurd.

He was 24, played 220 senior games, 44 games for Spain, had been a crucial player for a Valencia team that was in the Champions League and the third best team in Spain and everyone knew about him. You might as well call De Bruyne a prospect if you think Silva was.

As other people have pointed out, the Talkshite guy who hadn't heard of him was openly ridiculed because it was so ridiculous.
 
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