Three years of bad transfer dealings

[waspish]

If a big name player doesn't want to join your club, what can you do?

Let them go to the scum and flop?

 

[give it to gordon]

Thinking about teams that have dominated for years all off them had a right hard ba*tard, liverpool souness, scum keane, arsenal Vieira..,,,City ???, perhaps this is City's missing link we need a driver in midfield , yes we have Yaya who on his day is unplayable but he's not going to kick out at someone is he ! City are to nice

 

[OB1]

Here's the thing. If you think we should've signed Sanchez/Hazard/Fabregas (delete as appropriate) and believe that we didn't through some sort of incompetence on our part then you should probably stop commenting on such matters because you clearly don't understand them.

The year we won the title for the first time Khaldoon made it clear in his end of season review, that moving forward things would be different with respect to our approach to the transfer market. The accelerated spending was over and moreover, with FFP just over the horizon, the time had come to start cutting back since the core of a winning team was quite clearly there. What we needed to do was bring the wage bill more in line with our turn over, we needed to reshape and rebalance the squad as there were far too many players being paid way more than they were worth, which had a dual effect. Firstly it meant that for the wages we were paying we weren't getting value for money, and more importantly, shifting those heavy earners off the books was problematic because nobody wanted to take on the stupid contracts we'd given them.

What the club have done since that summer is very clear and very simple. They've taken the core of that first title winning side and extracted maximum value out of it (two titles in three years, potentially three in four), whilst simultaneously working on reducing the wage bill, getting us through the first FFP monitoring period, whilst keeping us competitive on the pitch. It isn't as eye catching as when we were signing Kun, Toure, etc. But it's a process we needed to go through because as we've seen, even with this three year drive towards sustainability we still failed FFP and were hit with sanctions. It doesn't bare thinking about how bad those sanctions would've been had we stuck to two fingers up at UEFA in the first place and carried on spending.

So people need to understand that Fernandinho and Sanchez, or Mangala and Sanchez, simply didn't cost the same amount of money. That's the kind of naive and simplistic logic which infuriates. Clubs don't make decisions on players based solely on their transfer fee, it's based on their wages plus transfer fee. Sanchez is purported to earn around 200k a week at Arsenal, which would be double what Mangala earns. Similarly Fabregas at Chelsea. So again you can say "they cost the same as Mangala" but that's just naive bollocks.

Next problem with this whole "we should've signed XYZ". When you're going after top players you have to first make sure you've got room in the squad for them. You can't just buy players on top of players. It's something which again goes back to the "we should've signed Hazard/Van Persie" narrative. The owners, Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon, made it abundantly clear to Mancini and co that there was NO way that a player like that was coming in unless room was made for them in the first team by selling another top earner. This wasn't some naive decision or some penny pinching exercise for the sake of it without any view on the football side of things. It was equally a footballing decision based on the fact that there were 4 supposedly world class forwards already at the club. Buying another one would've been a joke without moving one on first. This applies equally to the players we supposedly missed out on this summer. Had we gone after Fabregas without selling Toure he wouldn't have come anyway because - well at Chelsea he had a manager saying "you start every week, you're the main playmaker". Same with Sanzhez. He is undisputed number 1 at Arsenal. At City he'd have been in the same situation as Barca, part of a squad, playing some weeks to playing others.

So lets look specifically at the narrative that the players we've bought in the last three years have been shit. Or since the blame is squarely apportioned to Txiki, lets look at the players which Txiki has bought. It's both deluded, and revisionist rag nonsense to suggest that we bought badly in the summer of 2013. Demichelis, Negredo, Navas, and Fernandinho all played INTEGRAL parts in our title and league cup win. You can't have bad transfer policy by anyone's definition if you end the season with a lower wage bill than you ended the previous season, yet finish higher in the league and win more trophies. Not by anyone'e standards is that bad business. Maybe it wasn't long term business, but as I keep saying, we were working towards a very specific financial plan and for a specific time period.

I realise it's a forum but it's quite depressing how out of touch some posters are with the reality of what is going on at our football club and why things are the way they are when it comes to buying/selling players. Never mind Txiki or Ferran, we should be giving Mansour and Khaldoon a little more respect than acting out like little kids whenever we don't win a football match.

Not got time to read the thread (not sure I need to: I can imagine) but that is a excellent post. I do find it disappointing how unaware some supporters are of what the club's strategy is and how that ought to inform comments on things like transfer dealings; just as I find it totally depressing how quick to slate new players some supporters are. None of that means that we could not have bought better but no team has a perfect record in that regard.

This subject has had much debate one way or another and I would summarise my views as this:

We have not massively strengthened our squad since the first title win but we do currently have the best squad we have ever had; unfortunately, player absences have still managed to blight our season.
We do need to find a way to make a significant change in playing personnel this summer but we still need to retain those core players; especially Yaya Toure. In addition to YT, core to me means: Kun, Bony, Kompany, Mangala, Silva, Nasri, Zab, Bony & Hart. That is not meant to imply I think everyone else should go: I am in no hurry to see the back of players like MDM, Clichy, Navas or the Ferns but a priority for me is a truly outstanding partner for Yaya in the centre of midfield, someone who can do the dirty work for him but eventually takeover his mantle.
The squad needs to be reshaped to add more pace and creativity; plus players who can really play a pressing game.

 

[uwe rosler 28]

Maybe there waiting for peps wish list I still think were only 3 players away from having a truly world class team reus, biscuits and someone like john terry! The problem is squad players not nearly good enough!

Willy yes
sagna yes
kolarov no
Mangala no at the mo
boyata no
milner no
fernando no
navas no
lampard no 5 years ok yes
jovetic no
dzeko yes
kids no yet

the problem is when you have very good squad players they will often look for a move for 1st team football.

 

[daztrueblue91]

We are still paying top money and not getting value for it

Possibly the dumbest thing anyone can do is try and deduce the value of a player a few months after they've joined on a long term deal. Fernando and Managala are currently getting it in the neck in the same way Fernandinho, Toure, Silva, Zaba etc were getting it in the neck in the early part of their tenures at the club.

To be fair Fernando is getting it like Garcia did and based on his performaces so far that's justifiable. They both had strong debuts but had a torrid 6 months afterwards.

Mangala on the other hand is a strange one. He does look mistake prone but we went on that winning run with him being a constant figure in the side. I think if cost around £20 million and not £30 or 40+ million then he would get a lot less stick.

Although his transfer fee is not his fault, when you spend the large majority of your budget on one player whilst your rivals bring in top class players, you expect them to hit the ground running.

 

[dobobobo]

Buy a shit one instead

So there are only a handful of great players and the rest are shit?

Doesn't need to be a big name player. Just one to strengthen the team. Something we seem incapable of doing recently

Aye, I totally agree.

 

[dobobobo]

If a big name player doesn't want to join your club, what can you do?

Let them go to the scum and flop?

That is one thing that is making this season in a very tiny way fun.

 

[jollylescott]

Here's the thing. If you think we should've signed Sanchez/Hazard/Fabregas (delete as appropriate) and believe that we didn't through some sort of incompetence on our part then you should probably stop commenting on such matters because you clearly don't understand them.

The year we won the title for the first time Khaldoon made it clear in his end of season review, that moving forward things would be different with respect to our approach to the transfer market. The accelerated spending was over and moreover, with FFP just over the horizon, the time had come to start cutting back since the core of a winning team was quite clearly there. What we needed to do was bring the wage bill more in line with our turn over, we needed to reshape and rebalance the squad as there were far too many players being paid way more than they were worth, which had a dual effect. Firstly it meant that for the wages we were paying we weren't getting value for money, and more importantly, shifting those heavy earners off the books was problematic because nobody wanted to take on the stupid contracts we'd given them.

What the club have done since that summer is very clear and very simple. They've taken the core of that first title winning side and extracted maximum value out of it (two titles in three years, potentially three in four), whilst simultaneously working on reducing the wage bill, getting us through the first FFP monitoring period, whilst keeping us competitive on the pitch. It isn't as eye catching as when we were signing Kun, Toure, etc. But it's a process we needed to go through because as we've seen, even with this three year drive towards sustainability we still failed FFP and were hit with sanctions. It doesn't bare thinking about how bad those sanctions would've been had we stuck to two fingers up at UEFA in the first place and carried on spending.

So people need to understand that Fernandinho and Sanchez, or Mangala and Sanchez, simply didn't cost the same amount of money. That's the kind of naive and simplistic logic which infuriates. Clubs don't make decisions on players based solely on their transfer fee, it's based on their wages plus transfer fee. Sanchez is purported to earn around 200k a week at Arsenal, which would be double what Mangala earns. Similarly Fabregas at Chelsea. So again you can say "they cost the same as Mangala" but that's just naive bollocks.

Next problem with this whole "we should've signed XYZ". When you're going after top players you have to first make sure you've got room in the squad for them. You can't just buy players on top of players. It's something which again goes back to the "we should've signed Hazard/Van Persie" narrative. The owners, Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon, made it abundantly clear to Mancini and co that there was NO way that a player like that was coming in unless room was made for them in the first team by selling another top earner. This wasn't some naive decision or some penny pinching exercise for the sake of it without any view on the football side of things. It was equally a footballing decision based on the fact that there were 4 supposedly world class forwards already at the club. Buying another one would've been a joke without moving one on first. This applies equally to the players we supposedly missed out on this summer. Had we gone after Fabregas without selling Toure he wouldn't have come anyway because - well at Chelsea he had a manager saying "you start every week, you're the main playmaker". Same with Sanzhez. He is undisputed number 1 at Arsenal. At City he'd have been in the same situation as Barca, part of a squad, playing some weeks to playing others.

So lets look specifically at the narrative that the players we've bought in the last three years have been shit. Or since the blame is squarely apportioned to Txiki, lets look at the players which Txiki has bought. It's both deluded, and revisionist rag nonsense to suggest that we bought badly in the summer of 2013. Demichelis, Negredo, Navas, and Fernandinho all played INTEGRAL parts in our title and league cup win. You can't have bad transfer policy by anyone's definition if you end the season with a lower wage bill than you ended the previous season, yet finish higher in the league and win more trophies. Not by anyone'e standards is that bad business. Maybe it wasn't long term business, but as I keep saying, we were working towards a very specific financial plan and for a specific time period.

I realise it's a forum but it's quite depressing how out of touch some posters are with the reality of what is going on at our football club and why things are the way they are when it comes to buying/selling players. Never mind Txiki or Ferran, we should be giving Mansour and Khaldoon a little more respect than acting out like little kids whenever we don't win a football match.

Some very good points which put in a business context much of what has transpired in the last 2 or 3 years. There are no doubt major successes in a period where we have been scrutinised to the nth degree by the FFP guardians. It is an unqualified success that we are making the business sustainable in the long term. It is a success that we have been working towards making our wage bills more realistic. And of course as you said we have managed to be successful on the pitch as well.

However there is much work to be done in regenerating this current squad. This is where Txiki is really going to have to earn his paycheck. I think that there are a lot of players we are going to have to try and move on. Whether we can, of course, is another matter. After all Sinclair is still with us!

Overall it does disappoint me that so many fans choose to focus on our perceived failings, rather than celebrating the achievements of our leadership in the last 3 years. That's not to say that they have been perfect. There will always be things that can be done better.

Nevertheless the successes far outweigh the failings over the last 3 years.

 

[blueincy]

Hard to believe it will be four years in July since Aguero or last good signing was made, if you made a team from our last three windows it would just about manage top 8 at best...spurs signings the best of them if truth be told
Caballero £6m
Maicon £3m
Sagna £0.0m
Nastasic £12m
Faour £0.4m
Zuculini £1.5m
Mangala £32m
Demichelis £4.2m
Fernando £12m
Fernandinho £34m
Rodwell £15m
Garcia £15.8m
Sinclair £6.2m
Navas £14.9m
Jovetic £22m
Lampard £0.0m
Bony £28m
Negredo £16.4m

Compared with
Zabaleta
Kompany
Clichy
Kolarov
Yaya
De Jong
Barry
Nasri
Silva
Robinho
Aguero
Dzeko
Tevez
Balotelli

Ok we signed shit like Santa Cruz, adebayor etc...but come on

And the amount of money we've spent on that first list as well (I've put them in blue in your post). I keep reading "UEFA breathing down our necks" "but FFPR!" yet in three years we've spent £223.4m on that list of players. So it's not like we've really been scrimping and saving is it? We've spent £79m this season when we've supposedly had a transfer limitation set on us, well that's actually £25m more than we spent in the Summer of 2012.

Overall a £223.4m investment in seven transfer windows and not a single world class player being part of it is concerning.

To replace Barry and de Jong we've spent £76.8m and how much better off are we really? Fernandinho plays well with Yaya, but other than that we've gone backwards and Fernandinho doesn't play anywhere near as well without Yaya to hold his hand. That is some poor transfer dealings right there for me.
(Before anyone says it, I'm not saying we should have kept Barry and de Jong; I'm saying we have supposedly spent £76.8m to upgrade on them and gone backwards.)

Also, the takeover was six and a half years ago yet we still have to rely heavily on Silva and Nasri in attacking midfield. In all that time we've only bought those two players of decent quality in that area of the pitch and you're talking from the point of view of a club looking to emulate Barça, a club looking to play fast attractive football with lots of pretty goals. From the £~800m(+?) we've spent in that time, in all...two players in attacking midfield of that quality! While we spend £42.8m on Rodwell García and Fernando to replace de Jong, our third choice centre mid. Just what is that about at all?
Even a young hungry lad with bags of potential we could have snapped up for £10m or something would be better than nothing to cover these two, wouldn't it?

Those figures in blue look bad but in the grand scheme of things, a lot of those players have held their value. Also the likes of Nastasic , Garcia and Rodwell, whom were tried and tested have been since sold off , or being sold off for not that much different in what we paid for them.
When you tot the figures up and consider what those players have given us ( a league title and league cup) then we haven't spent as much as you think. Oh and haven't we made a 10m profit of Negredo? Also demichellis at 4m a snip.

I agree with most people on here though that this summer will be and should be one of our summers of Intent . Come on city

All the ones in the second list brought in by Garry Cook.

I think some people forget who was in charge of transfer dealings at the club (Marwood) when the likes of Javi Garcia, Jack Rodwell, Maicon, Scott Sinclair, Owen Hargreaves were brought in and players like Nigel De Jong were sold for pittance, which IMO was moving us in a backward direction. I'm more than happy with the way Txiki Begiristain operates and with the players he has brought to the club..

The only player I think we missed out on because of who was in charge of transfer dealings at the time was Santi Cazorla..
Can't wait till Bruno Zuculini is put into the first team and what a snip he was, to think clubs from all over were coming in for him but little did they Know Txiki had been and done the deal months in advance..

 

[Blue Hefner]

The long and short is that out 'depth' is a myth!

Kolarov, Dzecko, Jovetic, Sagna, Willy, Mangala, Fernando, Sinclair all need fucking off sharpish and replaced with younger, hungrier and generally better players

The squad is old and slow - not a good combination