Robinho's_thumb said:
Would you be satisfied with 5th?
Finishing 5th wouldn't be a disaster imo.
If Tottenham or Villa get in the CL I doubt they could bring in players that we couldn't.
We can get rid of the deadwood and really create a squad which can challenge for honours and get 2 top players for every position.
(I don't make many threads, but I'm really interested to find out what everyone thinks.)
When thinking of the bigger picture with City i always try to look at us objectively. And as much as i think that getting 4th will help us bring in some really top name players, I can't help but think that we are not ready for Champions League football yet.
I think we are a good 3-5 years off being a steady CL club and team. I still feel that we still deep into our infancy of building the pedigree of this club up and that consolidating ourselves as a regular 5th/6th placed Premier League team; making ourselves a team who will do well in domestic cups; and importantly a team who will do well, challenge for, if not win the Europa League - over the nest 3 seasons is more important for us than finishing 4th this season.
In my opinion(!!), i really don't think we have a CL goalkeeper, CL full backs, a CL central midfielder, a CL attacking midfielder, a CL right winger, (with Bellamy not being able to play many games in a row and his form-not his effort-sometimes being up and down) a CL left winger, and a CL second striker to play with Carlos if we need 2 up front in certain games. I cant see us buying 8 top world class players in the summer, i dont think we'll be going out and buying 8 new players in one window at all, i think we'll just add players here and there, maybe 3 in the summers and 1 in the winter, and that'll be it from now on! but i think we will need these 8 players for us not to have a shit/embarrasing first CL season!
Besides 4th means nothing! it doesnt win you a trophy, and it doesn't even get you into the CL! it gets you into a qualifyer where you could end up playing Lyon Sevilla Valencia Roma Juventus PSV Hamburg Leverkusen - with their European experience, what are the chances we'll get through anyway? plus this qualifyer is in September, after the transfer window closes, so which top European players will chance leaving their already CL clubs to come to a team that might but might not get into the CL?
As much as 4th and playing CL football excites me (who wouldn't it excite!?) to be honest i think i'd prefer to finish 5th! We can then look at improving our squad step by step and possibly a few more squad and utility players to really get us going as a serious club [i don't think we're viewed as a serious club yet, we just haven't been up where we are now for long enough!]
