Txiki Begiristain | Has left the club after 13 years (pg50)

Damocles said:
Again, £50m gets you a decent midtable player so that's a perfectly normal price. Phillips came directly from Pep after his hero recommended him.

When we originally signed Nunes, people were very excited and there was no talk of overpaying or anything

forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk

Welcome Matheus Nunes | Signing confirmed on a five-year deal

forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk

But let's go with your logic and suggest that both of these things were mistakes. Since Txiki Begiristain joined, the club has gone from scraping into the CL qualifiers to the country's most dominant football club at every single level of football from the first team to the under 8s, and has won a packet load of trophies doing it while making a profit every year for the last 5 years or so. But two transfers cancel that?
Click to expand...

Nail on the head. Decent, not world class. And tbh, I’ve never thought Phillips was decent, not even in a poor Leeds team, or playing for England. For the club the size of City, and where we are at now in terms of being successful, continually winning trophies, and maintaining that level, Phillips(and Nunes) have been dreadful buys. Just like Philips, I saw nothing of Nunues at Wolves that made me think he was a great buy, and he would bring something different and needed to the City team. Obviously, people have different opinions on players.
 
jrb said:
Nail on the head. Decent, not world class. And tbh, I’ve never thought Phillips was decent, not even in a poor Leeds team, or playing for England. For the club the size of City, and where we are at now in terms of being successful, continually winning trophies, and maintaining that level, Phillips(and Nunes) have been dreadful buys. Just like Philips, I saw nothing of Nunuescat at Wolves that made me think he was a great buy, and he would bring anything different and needed to the City team. Obviously, people have different opinions on players.
Click to expand...
Sure but we'd lost out on our primary options already so had to move down the targets list. The alternative to these players was nobody (or people even further away than first choice) and as both were bought as squad players and not first choice then it was a gamble worth taking. Nunes was never supposed to be a KDB replacement nor a winger nor a left back. Gundogan was never supposed to be first choice holding midfielder.

On top of this, there's the added point that sometimes for whatever reason a transfer just doesn't work. Maybe the player doesn't settle in the area or his kids don't like the schools or he can't understand the patterns properly or any number of reasons. These aren't things that can be accurately predicted 100% because we're dealing with human factors. We should know this better than anyone after hearing about Rodney Marsh for decades. Not a bad player at all, just didn't work.

Worth pointing out aswell that we can't have 18 world class players because we can neither afford it financially or in game time terms usually. In that Treble winning squad we had a brand new Rico Lewis, Sergio Gomez, Cole Palmer (before he was great), and even Kalvin Phillips got 600 minutes. You need squad players in the squad and that's what Nunes, Gundo and Phillips were bought to be. Even Savinho arguably
 
Vester said:
The players should already be here on January 1st. We can sign players whenever we want, we just have to wait until the registration windows is open before we can register them and use them in games. The need has been evident and obvious for some time, so there is no reason to why any potential targets would arrive late in the window.
Click to expand...
Whilst technically correct, which club is going to sanction selling one of their top players when the window isn't open for them to replace them?
 
I have to say, under Pep, Txiki hasn't really done good busines, particularly in the midfield.

Dinho and Kdb were signings made for Pellegrini but with the expectation that they would do well under Pep, but since Pep arrived, we have only seen Rodri, Bernie and Gundo. It just seems like Txiki stopped trying after that. Maybe he assumed Pep was going to fast track the younger players or something but he did take his foot off after getting those midfielders for Pep.

In terms of their relationship and that of the club in general, I feel like Jack's signing was the turning point, either Txiki didn't want him and Pep made him sign him or the other way around but something about Jack's signing changed our transfer policy for the worse.
 
Damocles said:
Some important things to note here that have to be constantly pointed out:
  • Txiki's job is not solely or even primarily about transfers. The Director of Football is essentially the head of the entire football operation over the medium to long term. That is how they are judged - if the club has been a success over the medium/long term and not whether they "had a good window" or if we lost a few games. People who do not judge him on this criteria do not understand his role and may as well be blaming him for the beer being shite
  • City won the Treble having the best squad in the world with players inherently trusted by the manager. People talk about Nunes and Phillips and the like as if they were our July 1st signings. They were not. The quality needed to improve that squad was so high that there were only a few players in the world worth it such as a Rice or a Bellingham, both of which we were in for. They chose to go to other clubs. We chose to fill the gaps with players who had performed well in the Premier League and were admired by the manager instead of getting absolutely nobody.
  • City are not a club with unlimited wealth and when people talk like this, they sound like Guardian writers. We made a £70-odd million profit this year. We sold £139m of players. We can't just go out and spend £500m every time we go on a bad run of form.
  • People constantly hark on about the price of Nunes and Phillips and they're not been relative to the transfer market. Moussa Diaby cost £50m now. Romeo Lavia cost £55m. Mount cost £60m. Tonali cost £55m. Brennan Johnson cost £50m. The idea that a £50m player should buy you a truly world class player is about 10 years out of date. £50m gets you a decent midtable level player who could grow into something nice which is exactly what Nunes is proving to be.
Again, this man is in charge of every football department and not just transfers. The entire direction of the club is down to him and we're the country's most successful club during his tenure here. I honestly don't know what some of you lot are thinking.
Click to expand...
I'm not really sure why you responded to my post since none of what you wrote is a response to what I wrote.

Like I said, Txiki has been brilliant for us over the years. But it's hard to argue our transfer business since winning the treble has been anything but poor. One thing does not exclude the other, even if you are trying to make a case it does.
 
Last edited:
Txiki Txiki Bang Bang said:
I have to say, under Pep, Txiki hasn't really done good busines, particularly in the midfield.

Dinho and Kdb were signings made for Pellegrini but with the expectation that they would do well under Pep, but since Pep arrived, we have only seen Rodri, Bernie and Gundo. It just seems like Txiki stopped trying after that. Maybe he assumed Pep was going to fast track the younger players or something but he did take his foot off after getting those midfielders for Pep.

In terms of their relationship and that of the club in general, I feel like Jack's signing was the turning point, either Txiki didn't want him and Pep made him sign him or the other way around but something about Jack's signing changed our transfer policy for the worse.
Click to expand...
Txiki also signed the likes of Mangala. His hit rate hasn’t been as good as people like to make out.
 
Damocles said:
Some important things to note here that have to be constantly pointed out:
  • Txiki's job is not solely or even primarily about transfers. The Director of Football is essentially the head of the entire football operation over the medium to long term. That is how they are judged - if the club has been a success over the medium/long term and not whether they "had a good window" or if we lost a few games. People who do not judge him on this criteria do not understand his role and may as well be blaming him for the beer being shite
  • City won the Treble having the best squad in the world with players inherently trusted by the manager. People talk about Nunes and Phillips and the like as if they were our July 1st signings. They were not. The quality needed to improve that squad was so high that there were only a few players in the world worth it such as a Rice or a Bellingham, both of which we were in for. They chose to go to other clubs. We chose to fill the gaps with players who had performed well in the Premier League and were admired by the manager instead of getting absolutely nobody.
  • City are not a club with unlimited wealth and when people talk like this, they sound like Guardian writers. We made a £70-odd million profit this year. We sold £139m of players. We can't just go out and spend £500m every time we go on a bad run of form.
  • People constantly hark on about the price of Nunes and Phillips and they're not been relative to the transfer market. Moussa Diaby cost £50m now. Romeo Lavia cost £55m. Mount cost £60m. Tonali cost £55m. Brennan Johnson cost £50m. The idea that a £50m player should buy you a truly world class player is about 10 years out of date. £50m gets you a decent midtable level player who could grow into something nice which is exactly what Nunes is proving to be.
Again, this man is in charge of every football department and not just transfers. The entire direction of the club is down to him and we're the country's most successful club during his tenure here. I honestly don't know what some of you lot are thinking.
Click to expand...
Someone has dropped the ball re. Succession planning. This has been coming for 2 years and no one’s addressed it.
 
jrb said:
In all honesty, and without continual scouting, performance data and analysis, etc, of players that they have at City, is there honestly anyone on BM that would have wanted and would have signed either Phillips and Nunes for a combined total of £100mill?
Click to expand...

Although I read the transfer forum avidly, I never comment on our potential targets for the simple reason that I've never seen enough of them so defer to the opinion of those that have. With one exception.

My mate's a Leeds supporters I watched most of their games that didn't clash with ours. He used to rave about Kalvin Phillips, so I watched with special interest. I posted my assessment on the transfer forum a couple of weeks before we signed him; "a yard dog without a forward pass in him".
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
I'm beginning to think that Txiki mentally checked out a couple of years ago.
Click to expand...
I get what you mean. I think he is fully focused still but that the hunger or drive has gone.
Possibly a mistake getting people to stay after having expressed a desire to move on.
Mistake with Txiki, possibly with Walker too. But then i'm glad Silva was talked around.
win some, lose some.
 
Lord Blue said:
I get what you mean. I think he is fully focused still but that the hunger or drive has gone.
Possibly a mistake getting people to stay after having expressed a desire to move on.
Mistake with Txiki, possibly with Walker too. But then i'm glad Silva was talked around.
win some, lose some.
Click to expand...
and unfortunately we/he couldn't persuade some to stay.
 
If there are going to be any incoming player transfers in January, Txiki will be involved in those. Let’s see who Txiki and ‘Viana’ bring in, if anyone?
 
Txiki hasn't been perfect but I don't think this mess solely lies with him. Pep has to shoulder a lot of the blame for not committing to a new contract until after the season starts. This is the second time he's left it until the November to commit to a new deal. How can we have a succession plan when we allow the manager to have that level of control over the club?
 
City64! said:
Txiki also signed the likes of Mangala. His hit rate hasn’t been as good as people like to make out.
Click to expand...
His recruitment at Barcelona were largely very poor as well. Massively helped by a generation of great academy products and Pep Guardiola. If you remove Pep from Txiki's career I very much doubt anyone would see him as this great DoF. If you remove Txiki from Pep's career, you still have the best manager on the planet.

To Txikis credit though, he probably were the one to take a chance on Pep when he was Barcelona B manager over the likes of Mourinho.
 
Mr Partridge said:
It's not the players we've signed that's the problem. It's the players we haven't signed.
Click to expand...
I think most signings since winning the treble have delivered what could be expected from them based on how they performed before joining us. The main problem as I see it is just that we replaced elite players with average ones, if we replaced them at all. We cant sell a Mahrez, replace him with a winger that scored 9 goals in 3 seasons in the French league and expect anything but an immediate drop off in quality. And thats not a dig at Doku, I think he is an exiting talent and I have certainly not ruled out him becoming a great asset in the future.
We cant sign a 25y old from Wolves who looked average there and expect him to be good at an even higher level.
One or two of these kind of signings could work (depending on our other transfer business), but when almost every signing is significantly worse than the player they are replacing over 2 summer windows, we are just weakening the squad both in quality and depth.

When we let several elite players go, we need to see at least some elite players joining.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top