Ray78 said:
Mister Appointment said:
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.
This is the point I am trying to make and this the reasoning why I am defending City's transfer policy. Cheers for trying to add more depth MA.
Again this is just revisionist history pretending to be smart. I'm sorry but MA is no more qualified to speak on transfers than any other fan. And his story only makes sense if you are not paying close attention. Sure Mangala will cost less than Sanchez if you add wages. But in one season we have now paid close to 80 million in Transfer fees that barely improved our squad. We are simply saying those fees and the wages could have gone to just for example, 2 players. Fabregas and Sanchez.
That would have greatly improved the squad and reduce the wage bill. Seeing as we wouldn't have had Fernando, Mangala, Caballero or, Sangna's wages. Perhaps not even Lampard's. We could have easily replaced this players with youth players who'd get games in spurts.
The reality is our purchases (5 new additions) suggests exactly the opposite of what MA claims. We are still adding unnecessarily to the wage bill. Now we have 4 new foreign players taking up spots, while we have others (
Like Sinclair and Nastasic) who are still on the wages and not adding value coz they are not being played). So no! Even the argument of no more accelerated funding is bull. Seeing as 5of the 7 entrants this season, are over 27 and 3 are over 30. All on top salaries and most on short term additions. Clearly even at the simple no more "accelerated" buying, As in even ignoring performance all together, this is STILL a failed attempt.
if we were truly trying to build from within, then we would have simply kept our squad from last year, and added youth like the Argie midfielder we paid good money for who's now a cheerleader in Spain. At least one could then understand the ridiculous argument MA is trying to make. And frankly, I'd have been okay we that.
I argued in the summer that we neither needed Mangala or the Roma kid that went to Bayern. I thought both were good but grossly overpriced for a position we were not even in need of. I suggested we go get Veltman, the Dutch kid at Ajax for 7 million (if the ich to get a CB) who wasn't gonna start, was that great. Veltman by the way is having a great season at Ajax so far.
The truth is quite simple: Club decision apologists continue to find one excuse after the other to justify what has been a poor summer of decision making. It didn't take rocket science to see it. We had done it once before and we failed miserably. And we are doing it again. And it would likely have the same outcome.
When you are successful, you go out and improve your starting 11, which automatically improves your squad. This is common sense 101 for big clubs. Frankly I believe that is what they attempted to do but failed at it. Mangala was supposed to have an aging Demichelis on the bench in no time, and Fernando was supposed to takeover Garcia's position. The problem is our scouting and reports were porous. I am a casual fan, and I could see from my couch that Mangala wasn't gonna oust MDM. Better yet, I alread y noticed that MDM was the better CB for the majority of last season, so unless Mangala was going to be benching out captain, he simply wasn't gonna be a starter. Fernando also was the same, he simply didn't have enough in his game to be better than last years big money signing Fernandihno ( again another sign that the " no more accelerated buying" is bullocks) as Fernando was brought in to bench the big money signing of the previous window. But he simply doesn't have Dihno's tenacity or all round game.
Trust me, Fernando is a very good defensive Midfielder, actually contrary to popular opinion he is far superior to either De Jong or Garcia. His back pass error last nite papered over what was otherwise a very smart game. That he was even aware enough to immediately cover when Kompany decide to go Rambo, is testament to his defensive awareness - error thereafter not withstanding. But he simply doesn't have enough in his overall game to add a lot to the attack.
We all knew this. Why didn't they?
But the point remains:
Whether it's attempting to improve the squad to win this year, reduce the wage bill, end accelerated buying, or building for the future:
On all counts the acquisitions for this year failed. It also failed to even consider our condition. I mean how can we buy a foreign backup goalie in a year when we have been penalized and told we'd have a player restriction. Why? Why buy a future player on limited funds, why? Why add to a position that already has more than enough players, then freeze one of those players out, if we are trying to reduce our wage bill?
And let's be clear, it silly and a 'red herring' to bring up claptrap like "show some appreciation for Mansoor and Khaldoom" that we appreciate them is a giving: without them we wouldn't even be talking about challenging or any of the players we have- but that's not the issue. It's simply an issue of did we make good decisions in light of the opportunities we had this summer? The answer is a resounding NO!
And no amount of revisionist color coding or accusations of ungrateful ness changed that. Stop accusing and address the points raised. That is how discussions are teased out.
