It's Quiet 32 - enter at own risk

Certainly the smarter of the two.

Van Dijk had the physique to deal with the roughouse players & Denayer swept up his mistakes.

It was simple enough & dirt cheap to pair them up for City as 3rd & 4th choice but we kept Demichelis & signed Otamendi instead.

This sort of hindsight neglects what happened over the interim years. We had Boateng at a similar point in his career and he was on the fringe of the team - form suffered and he left having achieved little. As we know he went on to do much better things and became a top class defender. VVD would have been in a similar position had we taken him from Celtic - no guarantee it would have worked. He had 2 and half years at Southampton and without that I don't think he would be the player he is today. Sometimes you have to accept the best path young players can take is with smaller clubs until they hit the top level.
 
This sort of hindsight neglects what happened over the interim years. We had Boateng at a similar point in his career and he was on the fringe of the team - form suffered and he left having achieved little. As we know he went on to do much better things and became a top class defender. VVD would have been in a similar position had we taken him from Celtic - no guarantee it would have worked. He had 2 and half years at Southampton and without that I don't think he would be the player he is today. Sometimes you have to accept the best path young players can take is with smaller clubs until they hit the top level.
I disagree. You can only play against what's in front of you, & in that respect VVD excelled in Scotland & continued that form into the PL.

At only £8m, surely he was worth the risk?
 
I disagree. You can only play against what's in front of you, & in that respect VVD excelled in Scotland & continued that form into the PL.

At only £8m, surely he was worth the risk?

In preference to Demichelis, that little old biddie who sits in the hatch selling rosary beads at St Kent’s Social Club wouldn’t have been a risk.
 
This sort of hindsight neglects what happened over the interim years. We had Boateng at a similar point in his career and he was on the fringe of the team - form suffered and he left having achieved little. As we know he went on to do much better things and became a top class defender. VVD would have been in a similar position had we taken him from Celtic - no guarantee it would have worked. He had 2 and half years at Southampton and without that I don't think he would be the player he is today. Sometimes you have to accept the best path young players can take is with smaller clubs until they hit the top level.

Imo he was already good enough to come to City, & learn from Vincent Kompany.

And Denayer had a chance of doing the same.

Boateng was nowhere near either.
 

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