So far it is not very good.
Torres is a talented winger, quick, but comes in as a replacement for Sane who was at much higher level before injuries, hopefully Torres will turn out to something similar, but in his first season I doubt he will have lot of game time. Mostly coming in from bench. Will he start more than 10 PL games? If there are lot of injuries to Bernardo, Sterling, Mahrez, Jesus, yes he will but otherwise I dont expect him to start more than 10 games. We will see, but also as first season he needs to get used to PL, different country, weather, higher expectations etc.
Ake, mostly positive things I see about him on the forum, he has PL experience, so he should not need long to get used to us, very bad in the air, but good on the ball and has pace, I need to see him playing at half way line with not much protection from rest of the team to see how good he is at CB in a City team.
We cannot really compare his Bournemouth performances as Bournemouth is a shit team, shipping 60-70 goals a year, they were not really a park the bus team and got punished for it a lot of times.
He was a captain of that defence, so to say they shipped all those goals despite him is a bit generous, of course should do much better in a team like City.
Still question marks if he is a starter for us, maybe plans by Pep to use him in LB, or only a 3rd CB who will be used for rotation at injuries..
Losing Sane, Silva, Angelino,Bravo I dont think we got good fees for Sane and Angelino, we should have done better there. Sane's unlucky injury cost us huge transfer fee and there was not really needed to start him in his last game for us but Pep did and it backfired big time. If we can sell him in August 2019 at least 15-20 more should have been charged as a fee and we would have saved his salary for the year another 5-6m.
Sane was replaced with Torres, Angelino does not need replacing until we have Mendy/Zinch/Cancelo even maybe Ake playing LB, but huge question marks over Mendy and Zinch imo.
For Silva we are hoping Foden and Bernardo will take over and fill his place, lets see how it goes.
For Bravo leaving we seem to put our trust into Steffen as number two, dont know anything about him, cant comment. Has much lower salary than Bravo I am sure, so we are saving a bit on that at least.
3 more weeks to do transfers, top CB is priority, if Txiki fails to get one that is on him, he had like extra 4 months covid break to come up with his scouting department to identify targets and get negotiating started, if our only option is a 29 year old Koulibaly who we need to negotiate through his own agent because of our pride, and it all goes to fuck in the end without a proper plan B activated and signed then that is comedy gold for our rivals basically.
But our defensive issues are larger than the personnel of defence in CB, how Pep will be able with this shitshow/lack of preseason to make our fitness levels as high as it needs to be to play proper pressing football and too get the playes to have immense workrate off the ball in these we struggled a lot which have put our defence into very uncomfortable situations high up the pitch, losing balls in the middle, not running back with them, and within two seconds quick players running behind you 1 vs 1 at Ederson etc.
If these things are not corrected by Pep and his team, we can have Koulibaly/Laporte duo and still our defence can will be punished a lot.
That first game vs Wolves is a perfect test, last year what they did to us with their counters is exactly a test Pep needs to be able to overcome regularly this season...
