Player Topic: Wilfried Bony (2015/16)

[Rolee]

Because you haven't made a point worth responding to.

"Well they're different players" has absolutely no bearing on the point that Bony isn't good enough to play for us no matter what specific job he's given to do.

Ok so the point I'm making that it's good to have alternatives isn't one worth making? Fair enough mate, leave it that.

 

[Phil1]

I've missed Damocles.

 

[Damocles]

Ok so the point I'm making that it's good to have alternatives isn't one worth making? Fair enough mate, leave it that.

It's good to have quality alternatives.

I know a fat 47 year old lad with a beer belly, yellow fingers and one leg but that doesn't mean we should give him 20 minutes against Barca.

 

[CityStu]

I don't think you can blame Txixi. If we were looking at strikers then the Bony at Swansea was a great option. He was scoring for fun (top scorer in 2014 I believe) and his overall play was also excellent.

He's improved a lot over the past few weeks and was outstanding against Sevilla. I think that shows how important playing regularly is - he's had a good run of games and knows he'll get a few more and he's starting to perform.

You should also consider the type of player he is. Aguero does best when running onto a ball but Bony is better when the ball is played into his body. It's something that the players around him will learn to adapt to.

 

[Rolee]

It's good to have quality alternatives.

I know a fat 47 year old lad with a beer belly, yellow fingers and one leg but that doesn't mean we should give him 20 minutes against Barca.

So a player that has scored 6 and assisted 6 in 11 starts isn't a quality alternative? Ok mate.

 

[ComfySeats]

I think the problem with bony is at Swansea he was at a team, where he had time and space because opposition whilst respecting them wouldn't exactly fear them (not an insult just an observation). At city he will get less time and less space so he whilst he is still playing football he is gone from playing one type of play which really suits him to one which doesn't. As when we play teams even the so called big teams, we are feared and therefor he doesn't get the time. Just my opinion

I will say whilst I have slated him on here a few times for a lack of enthusiasm etc, what I did enjoy seeing the other night when he got his goal, was the pass from Navas ( I think) which set him up, as soon as he scored he went over and kissed navas on the head, so it obviously means a lot to him to be scoring. So based on this I am going to pipe down and give him a brake, not like he cares what I think. :D

 

[Damocles]

So a player that has scored 6 and assisted 6 in 13 starts isn't a quality alternative? Ok mate.

You're right, we should sign Vardy. And just in case we should go and get James Beattie, Benjani, Kevin Phillips, Callum Wilson, Darren Bent, Jermaine Defoe, Charlie Austin, Papiss Cisse, Kevin Davis too. We'll be absolutely overflowing with goals then

Though like Bony, none of these are of the required quality to succeed.

 

[Uncle Wally One Ball]

It's good to have quality alternatives.

I know a fat 47 year old lad with a beer belly, yellow fingers and one leg but that doesn't mean we should give him 20 minutes against Barca.

I know hes a Mickey but let's leave Robbie Fowler out of this

 

[Newman Noggs]

I have a very specific problem with him that judging by this thread very few people have really think about.

I don't think he's a very good football player; at least not to the standard that it takes to be one of the main strikers at a club like City. Like Dzeko, he reminds me of a handyman.

If your entire fuse box blows up do you call a handyman? No, you ring a spark.

If your entire external wall falls down do you call a handyman? No, you ring a bricklayer.

A handyman is a person who you employ when either you don't want to or don't have the opportunity to get in a truly skilled worker, and instead just want a small job doing to average to decent standards. Sergio Aguero is a joiner because he's specifically useful for a task and performs that task with incredible precision and talent. In fact out of all the joiners around he's one of the best in the world so you pay his rates knowing what you're getting.

Bony is the football equivalent of a handyman. He isn't actually great at anything and is passable at most things. These sort of players are fine as your third and fourth choice players who can beef out the squad, they are absolutely not players who you put the responsibility of being a main starter to.

One of my major frustrations about FFP is that is inherently was illogical. Money is shown to have a huge amount to do with success, and FFP restricts the amount of money you can spend based on where you are in the table in a simplified light. UEFA tried to tell people that in a straight race, you can beat people by running slower than them - you can compete with major clubs by spending less. This to me was both brazen and irritating.

I've always carried the "compete with your competition" mantra into signings as well. We want to compete with Barca, Bayern, and Real Madrid who represent the very top level of squads at the moment. One of the things that we should look at in our team is asking the question "will our first team starters even get in their team?". If the answer is no then they aren't good enough for us because like in FFP, you can't beat people in a race by running slower than them. When we start getting into the third and fourth choices then it becomes less important but we should have 15 players who would compete to get into the those teams.

Would Bony on his own talent, regardless of his form, get in front of Messi, Neymar or Suarez?
What about Ronaldo or Benzema?
Lewandowski or Muller?

Put those 8 names together and Bony is almost certainly the odd one out in terms of talent. Aguero fits it like a glove.

I don't know why City always do this; they buy a second striker who is obviously nowhere near as talented as Aguero then sell them a couple of years later for less. Bony is better than Jovetic but to fair Eddie Large would have been a more effective player for us than Jovetic. He's probably on par with Dzeko in specific terms of talent though Bony wins some fights and Dzeko others. Same with Negredo. Balo could have been the best of the lots but threw it away. The less said about the others the better.

The fact is that City haven't had two quality strikers since the title winning season where both Tevez and Aguero were in the squad. Ever since then it's £30m on average rather than £50m on quality - a road Arsenal metaphorically traveled down for years and years to their detriment.

I still contend that Bony was a panic buy, brought in to see if we could snatch a win against Barca and make a push for the title due to poor squad management by Txiki. He was the in form striker at the time in the league and we wanted him to come in and hit the ground running which he didn't do.

Regardless of when he has good games and bad games, which tends to move opinions on here more than a pissed up swarm of seagulls, my problem with him isn't that he plays bad, it's that as a footballer I don't think he has the required technical or mental ability to sit at the top table where we dine from. I think the idea that he could potentially knock a fit Aguero out of the team is quite honestly hilarious, and if he isn't providing competition to Aguero then there's no point in been here. I don't care if he's Kelechi's long lost Dad, we don't pay him a hundred grand a week to babysit people but to win us games.

Come January presuming our recent spending policies remain the same then he'll be relegated to third choice or perhaps if Kelechi steps up then fourth choice. We'll buy a striker in Jan no matter what, and I think that will be the end of Bony's run as a legit first team player.

My old man used to tell me to be suspicious of opinions that everybody says but nobody can explain why they think that or point to examples of it. I take the piss using the "great hold up play by Bony there" because it's a meaningless cliche where 99% of the time when people use it that are trying to justify an opinion held because they WANT him to be good rather than thinking he's good. A strange type of football fan pseudo-management speech that sounds intelligent and tricks you for a second until you think about it and then makes no sense at all. Wouldn't be surprised to learn that Bony provides a great synergy to the team with his effervescent qualities and ephemeral or fugacious transitional play from his fans.

The fact that he then smacks the ball wide or gives it away doesn't fit that narrative. But he wears a blue shirt and is good on Football Manager so to some of our posters this means that he's actually a great player who has hundreds of excuses in front of him about why he isn't showing that. Listen I'm Txiki's biggest fan but sometimes we buy a dud and at the standard of his competition for the top spot then Bony is a dud.

If Bony was 19 then I'd think we had a great talent on our hands because he's a player with all the attributes but not specifically great yet; somebody who needs some polishing and working on like a Sterling who has everything potentially but little right now. Sterling and Bony are both players who are on the edge. Unfortunately one of them is 20 and the other is 26, now considered in the prime of his career rather than his development phase.

Wonderful post. I disagree with the conclusion because I think you need strikers with contrasting styles to balance a squad and happen to think Bony is excellent at what he does. That's holding it up when our defence clears it whilst our midfield catch up or winning headers when it's cleared upfield and generally badgering the centre half so the ball doesn't come straight back at us. Could he be better ? Of course. Are there better strikers ? Of course ! Is he what we need ? I'd say, yes.

 

[Rolee]

You're right, we should sign Vardy. And just in case we should go and get James Beattie, Benjani, Kevin Phillips, Callum Wilson, Darren Bent, Jermaine Defoe, Charlie Austin, Papiss Cisse, Kevin Davis too. We'll be absolutely overflowing with goals then

Though like Bony, none of these are of the required quality to succeed.

Sigh