Except it's not the easy option to blame Txiki. Criticising anybody who works for the club I care about more than any other is never the easy option, and criticising the man whose presence at the club was chiefly responsible for bringing us Pep Guardiola is also not the easy option. But that doesn't mean I can't look at Txiki's overall performance in the transfer market, and the performances of the first team under his leadership, and not feel a little disappointed in him.
When Mancini and Garry Cook were understandably replaced during the 12/13 season, we were sold a vision of holism that would apparently benefit many things, including our efficiency in the transfer market, but looking at the evidence that hasn't turned out to be the case. After the clusterfuck of the 2012 summer window anything would look like an improvement, but the reality is that we have under-performed in terms of player recruitment and squad management since Begiristain arrived at the club.
We have spent upwards of £300m since the summer of 2013 (excluding this summer) and yet we've taken steps backwards. Of the 14 first team signings we've made since then (excluding this summer), only three have improved the first team long term: De Bruyne, Fernandinho, Sagna. The rest either were not good enough (Jovetic, Caballero, Bony, Fernando, Mangala), haven't shown their full potential yet (Sterling, Delph), failed to sustain the form they showed early on in their City careers (Navas, Demichelis), or left under mysterious circumstances (Negredo).
In this time we also dismantled the core of a title-winning squad and fell from 1st to 4th (joint 5th if we're being harsh), failing to replace the likes of Lescott, Milner and Dzeko - players whose time at the club had definitely come to an end but were too important to lose without adequate replacements. Considering he's in charge of transfers, squad management and player recruitment, Txiki has to take the blame for this.
This summer got off to a good start, with the early arrivals of Gundogan and Nolito, but a disastrous commercial venture in China (admittedly a Soriano idea) has left our squad unprepared for the first few games of the season and we're facing the prospect of starting the season with Fernando and Kolarov (two players who should be nowhere near a Pep Guardiola team) as our CBs. We didn't go out and buy a defender early on in the window when it was clearly an area of serious concern. Instead we're haggling over £4-5m for Stones when just two years ago we were throwing upwards of £40m at Porto for Mangala.
And now the most sought after player in world football has gone to our greatest rivals when we could have signed him last summer for considerably less than the world record fee. Yes, big deals are complicated, but players like Pogba are worth the hassle to acquire. Instead, we moved too late in that particular and now face losing out on the Premier League title because we didn't act first. That is down to Txiki Begiristain.
So no, it's not the easy option, but it's where I place the blame.
