It's Quiet 32 - enter at own risk

Chill everyone, it's all going to kick off from next Monday on for the kit launch and the transfers. Mind you we've still got 4 separate investigations to resolve as well. July & August are going to be very busy I suspect.
 
If a transfer ban is imposed and we allow Sane to leave this summer, we'd be in serious doo doo.

I personally don't think that's the case at all. If both Sane and Gundogan stay, and we sign Rodri, I think we have a serious problem keeping everyone in our squad happy.

If Sane goes, shift Bernardo to be first and foremost a winger - it's where Pep seemingly prefers him, and he was absolutely excellent there last season. We can still use him as cover in CM if we need to.

Would essentially leave us with:

Central Midfield - KDB, Gundogan, Silva, Foden as the primary CM's, with Bernardo rotating in when required. Zinchenko becomes an option if required and, assuming we sign Rodri, Fernandinho also has the ability to play further up. Give someone like Zinchenko the opportunity to show his ability in his actual position, so when Silva leaves, we have another player ready to enter the fold for depth, rather than going out and spunking £40m on someone to play a rotation role.

Wingers - Sterling, Bernardo and Mahrez as our primary options. More responsibility placed on Mahrez could be what he needs to finally look like the £60m POTY we bought. Not to mention that Jesus is capable of playing out wide if necessary and also Angelino and Cancelo, assuming we sign both, are more than capable of playing in more advance roles. Pep's even played the former in an attacking midfield role before we shipped him off on loan. Signing these two also allows us to play in a back 3 formation with genuine attacking wingbacks, which negates the need of having 4 wingers in the squad.

I obviously don't want to lose such a talent as Sane and it will be a blow, because I think he'll be one of the worlds best in a 2-3 seasons, but I think it actually will solve a lot of problems with players being unhappy with lack of game time, not to mention a significant fee.
 
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If we have a squad of 22, we can expect 3 to be out injured every game 1-2 to be out of form, and 1-2 to be rested or out suspended or for other reasons. Doubt there are many games when Guardiola can select from 22.
 
I personally don't think that's the case at all. If both Sane and Gundogan stay, and we sign Rodri, I think we have a serious problem keeping everyone in our squad happy.

If Sane goes, shift Bernardo to be first and foremost a winger - it's where Pep seemingly prefers him, and he was absolutely excellent there last season. We can still use him as cover in CM if we need to.

Would essentially leave us with:

Central Midfield - KDB, Gundogan, Silva, Foden as the primary CM's, with Bernardo rotating in when required. Zinchenko becomes an option if required and, assuming we sign Rodri, Fernandinho also has the ability to play further up. Give someone like Zinchenko the opportunity to show his ability in his actual position, so when Silva leaves, we have another player ready to enter the fold for depth, rather than going out and spunking £40m on someone to play a rotation role.

Wingers - Sterling, Bernardo and Mahrez as our primary options. More responsibility placed on Mahrez could be what he needs to finally look like the £60m POTY we bought. Not to mention that Jesus is capable of playing out wide if necessary and also Angelino and Cancelo, assuming we sign both, are more than capable of playing in more advance roles. Pep's even played the former in an attacking midfield role before we shipped him off on loan. Signing these two also allows us to play in a back 3 formation with genuine attacking wingbacks, which negates the need of having 4 wingers in the squad.

I obviously don't want to lose such a talent as Sane and it will be a blow, because I think he'll be one of the worlds best in a 2-3 seasons, but I think it actually will solve a lot of problems with players being unhappy with lack of game time, not to mention a significant fee.

That doesn't sound bad - until the first 52 season matches are in our legs and the big games are knocking on the door.
Pep is mainly bringing on wingers and AMs as subs to open up deep sitting sides, we need fresh legs especially there.

Unhappy players?
Players are aware joining City has a risk as well as we want to have 2 great players for each position.
Competition and rotation are fundamentals in our squad philosophy and if players can't cope with that situation they shouldn't join City.

They can join let's say Arsenal instead and be happy - but that medal has a backside, too ...

We want to have the best players to achieve our goals and surely we want to keep Leroy.
We don't need the fee. We are not a selling club.
 
What if City are okay with going in with 3 senior centre backs for next season in reality? Fernandinho/Walker/Eric Garcia/Sandler all 4th choices from senior squad.

I say that again because this Maguire move could just be funded by Otamendi sale + having to pay less? So in short the whole 3rd choice centre half is dependent on if and how much Otamendi can be sold for. If he decides to stay we won't get a Maguire or someone else (maybe). Just a theory.
 
What if City are okay with going in with 3 senior centre backs for next season in reality? Fernandinho/Walker/Eric Garcia/Sandler all 4th choices from senior squad.

I say that again because this Maguire move could just be funded by Otamendi sale + having to pay less? So in short the whole 3rd choice centre half is dependent on if and how much Otamendi can be sold for. If he decides to stay we won't get a Maguire or someone else (maybe). Just a theory.

We will be buying just one centre-back, regardless of whether Ota stays or not.
 

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