pikku said:
City1974 said:
Would we have been better keeping Zuculini here in the 25 man Premier League squad backup until Jan, rather than getting Lampard on loan and probably on very high wages.
In addition when Lampard leaves in Jan, not long after, Yaya Toure will be off the the African Cup of Nations and thus that would have been another reason perhaps to keep Zuculini ?
Agree,bad decision to loan him out.He looked good in the pre season games too.Me thinks he is a bench warmer at valencia,hardly hearing about him now that he is off there.If we could get him back in jan,then it would be good.
We can't get him back in Jan as the loan of Zuculini to Valencia I think is season long. Thus come Jan Lampard is gone and mid Jan to end of Feb Toure wont be here unless he decides to retire from playing for the Ivory Coast.
The African Cup runs 17th Jan - 8th Feb 2015 and teams meet up about 2 weeks before thus Toure will miss some key games for City (Everton, Arsenal Chelsea in particular)
January 10: Everton (A)
January 17: Arsenal (H)
January 31: Chelsea (A)
February 7: Hull City (H)
February 11: Stoke (A)
and any FA Cup game on Jan 24th weekend.
A couple of other points:
I also thought another good reason to sign Mangala rather than Benatia was that Benatia (for Morocco) would also have gone off to the African Nation Cup in mid Jan with Toure, but as yet of course Mangala has not been used anyway, but hopefully soon if not today.
In addition could not the wages being paid to Lampard not have have helped possibly fund the wages for a loan deal for Falcao instead of letting Utd grab him ?
