Marc Cucurella

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Pollocksheader said:
Again another one mentioning Mendy like it’s remotely relevant. If this is the case then be prepared to never sign a left back blues because 5 years ago we got one wrong. No wingers either considering what we spent on grealish and the current return. Sorry guys.
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You really are a little ray of sunshine aren't you?

Of course Mendy is relevant - everytime a club signs a player and they flop they learn to be a little more cautious... and I'm just talking about Mendy on the pitch (nothing else)

If you think that City should have spunked £50m+ on a player with no CL experience, no international experience, just one decent prem season under his belt then that's your choice, luckily the club didn't...
 
Kalimantan said:
From the outside looking in (thanks for having us BHA fans here by the way) there's still one thing I don't understand about this whole saga.

Having read much of this thread, a few things seem clear. You need a new LB/LWB, ideally a left footer, Cancelo very good in that position but can struggle defensively in the big games, you're a very well run club, great scouting, you don't need nor want to take risks in signings, Cucu has been your priority, Pep wants him, you've made profits on player sales this summer, and you don't value him much more than £30-40m. None of which I have reason to dispute.

The question then is WHY was Cucu your first choice? You're Man City, the best team in the country, one of the best in the world, with major ambition to win the Champions League. You have a squad full of players worth in excess of £50m. So why was your top target for the critical LB position, where you have a clear need, and selected by your scouting dept and manager, just a player worth no more than 30-40m? You'd be picking sides with global superstars 1 to 11, except for the average floppy haired guy on the left.

I find that hard to reconcile. It's not a dig, just doesn't quite add up.
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The club choose players by a whole range of criteria. Price is just one of them. Not sure I get your point, because we didn't rate him at more than 40m, he shouldn't have been a target LB? Does every player under £50m not count as a proper target? Our last LB who played more games than anyone else in that position over the last 5 years cost £1.7m.

Don't disagree with the view that knowing how far out the valuations were, the club could have moved on some time ago, but there will be reasons for thinking they could conclude it.

Disagree with your earlier comment about 'we/us' not being fair on Brighton and the board. Mixed bag here and there but overall many took their stance for what it was, which imo is fair.
 
Coatigan said:
The club choose players by a whole range of criteria. Price is just one of them. Not sure I get your point, because we didn't rate him at more than 40m, he shouldn't have been a target LB? Does every player under £50m not count as a proper target? Our last LB who played more games than anyone else in that position over the last 5 years cost £1.7m.

Don't disagree with the view that knowing how far out the valuations were, the club could have moved on some time ago, but there will be reasons for thinking they could conclude it.

Disagree with your earlier comment about 'we/us' not being fair on Brighton and the board. Mixed bag here and there but overall many took their stance for what it was, which imo is fair.
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If you look at the stats posted on the Gomez thread, there isn’t much difference between the Cucurella and Gomez. Certainly not £35m worth.
 
Nicholas van Whatsisface said:
Interesting question mate - and welcome, by the way!

My take is it’s down to prioritisation. We allocate budget for each window based on priority areas for the squad - and that plays a part in the valuation we arrive at for a player. How great is our need, essentially.

Whilst most of our fans would feel Left Back is a clear gap in the squad, and would have prioritised bringing a specialist LB in this summer - myself included - our CEO Ferran Soriano gave an interview earlier this summer during a trip to Iceland where he set out our transfer priorities very clearly.

His position was there were two priority spaces to fill in the squad this summer - a specialist centre forward, after pretty much two back to back seasons playing false 9, and a defensive midfielder to replace Fernandinho.

Those were the priorities - nothing more.

We brought in Haaland for the first, and Phillips for the second.

We clearly decided we wanted to try for a left back (and I’d imagine this was brought forward after Zinchenko left), but it wasn’t as important to us - so we didn’t allocate the same level of budget to it.

This also explains why we came to Cucurella so late.

Like I say - to most fans, not prioritising a LB doesn’t make any sense. But the Club couldn’t really have been much clearer in their thinking.

They clearly saw him as a nice to have, not an essential.
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Thank you.

This makes more sense than any other reply, sounds like you maybe saw him as a back up to Cancelo with the possibility of more, which is fair enough. Because surely no player worth less than £50m has any business being in the Man City 1st XI.

My take, fwiw, is that City genuinely thought there was an opportunity to get him for £30-40m, however misguided that might have been in the end, and made that quite publically known. That position then gets entrenched with most City fans agreeing with and defending that valuation, and rejecting paying more. I don't know, but am fairly sure, that if City publically valued him at £50m there wouldn't have been that many posts on here saying he wasn't worth that amount. You don't see many posts on the Chelsea site saying that's overpriced, and they've already got Chilwell. Because it's all monopoly money in the end, 10m, 30m, 50m, 70m, these numbers become meaningless to the likes of you and I.

So an entrenched position on value becomes very hard to walk away from, as offering 30 and paying 50 looks like you're backing down or being taken for a fast one, whereas offering 45 and paying 50 may well have been considered good business. A perception game.
 
Alan Harper's Tash said:
If you look at the stats posted on the Gomez thread, there isn’t much difference between the Cucurella and Gomez. Certainly not £35m worth.
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Yeah that thread jumped 30 pages since this morning when it didn't exist at all, so I skipped through most of it, although I probably get the gist. Exciting stuff. Too far behind to try catch up there hence hanging about on this old thread like a chump.
 
Coatigan said:
The club choose players by a whole range of criteria. Price is just one of them. Not sure I get your point, because we didn't rate him at more than 40m, he shouldn't have been a target LB? Does every player under £50m not count as a proper target? Our last LB who played more games than anyone else in that position over the last 5 years cost £1.7m.

Don't disagree with the view that knowing how far out the valuations were, the club could have moved on some time ago, but there will be reasons for thinking they could conclude it.

Disagree with your earlier comment about 'we/us' not being fair on Brighton and the board. Mixed bag here and there but overall many took their stance for what it was, which imo is fair.
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Only tongue in cheek on that last comment.

But yes, that's my main argument. Of course you can get players cheaper, for a whole range of reasons. Often they're just players your taking a punt on who aren't expected to feature much at first. And maybe you want to get a bargain and still think you can get one somewhere else, fair enough. That's what clubs like Brighton are doing all the time.But if your club has specifically selected this guy as the one to chase, I don't understand why you only value him at that amount considering the objective is to improve your side. A £30m-rated player is not good enough to play in the Champions League final - but its also a large enough fee not to be a punt. And if that's all Cucu is, and I'm not saying he IS that good, why haven't you targeted someone else who will be a difference maker? Like I say, from the outside doesn't seem to add up.
 
Kalimantan said:
Thank you.

This makes more sense than any other reply, sounds like you maybe saw him as a back up to Cancelo with the possibility of more, which is fair enough. Because surely no player worth less than £50m has any business being in the Man City 1st XI.

My take, fwiw, is that City genuinely thought there was an opportunity to get him for £30-40m, however misguided that might have been in the end, and made that quite publically known. That position then gets entrenched with most City fans agreeing with and defending that valuation, and rejecting paying more. I don't know, but am fairly sure, that if City publically valued him at £50m there wouldn't have been that many posts on here saying he wasn't worth that amount. You don't see many posts on the Chelsea site saying that's overpriced, and they've already got Chilwell. Because it's all monopoly money in the end, 10m, 30m, 50m, 70m, these numbers become meaningless to the likes of you and I.

So an entrenched position on value becomes very hard to walk away from, as offering 30 and paying 50 looks like you're backing down or being taken for a fast one, whereas offering 45 and paying 50 may well have been considered good business. A perception game.
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You make a valid point around entrenched positions. However I think you overstate the importance of fan opinion in any of this - certainly as far as City is concerned.

Our board will have made their valuation of the player based on a number of factors (priority bring one of them, as covered), and their reluctance to go above that valuation has seen them walk from a number of deals over the years - much to a large contingent of our fans’ frustration, as you’ve seen for yourself on here over the last couple of days.

Maguire, Sanchez, Fred, Koulibaly and Kounde are just a few names I can think of off the top of my head, but there are more. You can now add Cucurella to that list.

The reality is you’d have to say their valuation has been proven right every time.

It’s this perception that matters to our owners. The perception in the footballing world of being an exceptionally well run club, and not some bunch of mugs you can take the piss out of with outlandish prices.

Whether some of our fans on a message board think Txiki and the Club are ‘an embarrassment’ because they won’t just cough up the extra £10m needed to seal the deal doesn’t play into their thinking in any way. Otherwise they’d change the way they behave - which there’s no sign of them doing.

The entrenched position is nothing to do with fans on message boards and on Twitter - it’s entrenched from the start, and is entirely based on the board’s assessment of value.

Just like Tony Bloom did at your end - and fair play to him.

Although if that fucking idiot journo who does Bloom’s PR for him is anything to go by, I’d expect there’s a bit more fan perception involved in his how he wants his behaviour to be perceived by Brighton fans than Txiki does with ours.

Most of our fans hate Txiki and think he’s shite at his job, yet he carries on exactly the same and doesn’t seem to care remotely about their perception of him!
 
Kalimantan said:
Thank you.

This makes more sense than any other reply, sounds like you maybe saw him as a back up to Cancelo with the possibility of more, which is fair enough. Because surely no player worth less than £50m has any business being in the Man City 1st XI.

My take, fwiw, is that City genuinely thought there was an opportunity to get him for £30-40m, however misguided that might have been in the end, and made that quite publically known. That position then gets entrenched with most City fans agreeing with and defending that valuation, and rejecting paying more. I don't know, but am fairly sure, that if City publically valued him at £50m there wouldn't have been that many posts on here saying he wasn't worth that amount. You don't see many posts on the Chelsea site saying that's overpriced, and they've already got Chilwell. Because it's all monopoly money in the end, 10m, 30m, 50m, 70m, these numbers become meaningless to the likes of you and I.

So an entrenched position on value becomes very hard to walk away from, as offering 30 and paying 50 looks like you're backing down or being taken for a fast one, whereas offering 45 and paying 50 may well have been considered good business. A perception game.
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£30-40m means nothing to a top half team with 4 years left on his contract, unless they’re in the shit financially or are confident they’ve got a replacement in the midst. I think we’ve been naive, but confident we’ll get at least 1 fullback this window.
 
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