Txiki Begiristain

[ADegenerate]

Txiki deserves more credit than he gets IMO. He gets heat for the Managala, Otamendi, and Bony transfers but if you look at them from a logical POV both CB transfers were correct decisions from my POV.

He's gotten it right from a value pov in many cases. Leroy already seems like a steal at 50m. Even Raz at 63m looks like it could be decent business, value wise, which wasn't much of a consideration in the process. John was steep too but he's starting to come along nicely and the price there isn't looking so bad.

I think we absolutely fleeced Palmeiras for Gabriel Jesus and in a few years time he might become the most valuable player in the world.

Time will tell on Zinchencho, Moreno, Unal, etc but that was undeniably great business. This summer will be a very interesting window but I trust him/Pep completely.

I think he should also get some credit for not panic buying a CB, as many, if not most wanted. Sometimes no action is the best action which can get overlooked. What is it now? 5 straight away clean sheets? City 1st I believe.

 

[Ric]

Even Raz at 63m looks like it could be decent business

Bloody hell, I know some sections of the press were keen to inflate the Sterling fee, but not even the Liverpool Echo would try and pass it off as £63m!

 

[ADegenerate]

Bloody hell, I know some sections of the press were keen to inflate the Sterling fee, but not even the Liverpool Echo would try and pass it off as £63m!

62,50 Mill. € via transfermarkt. Blame that damn transferarkt website and me being american :P. You're not the first to quote my figures.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Transfer Market stores the transfer in the currency it was done in(£53.13m) but then translates it to other currencies at the current market rate.

 

[citizen_maine]

62,50 Mill. € via transfermarkt. Blame that damn transferarkt website and me being american :P. You're not the first to quote my figures.

So, given that you're American (USD), posting on a UK site (GBP) and quoting a German(?) one (EUR), don't you think it would have been an idea to state the currency you were using? :-)

 

[gazzaa2]

You have a point but you have to balance that out against wages, we could blow other clubs out of the water by offering more wages. You only need look at the annual salaries of clubs at the time for evidence of this. Since Soriano/Txiki came in there's been a concerted effort to reduce the wage bill to something that's more sustainable and as a result our competitors have caught up with us and overtaken us in a a couple of cases meaning our negotiating hand with players/agents has weakened.

As for who we were in a bidding war with, we can only go off press reports and speculate on whether they're true or not, if we accept they are then we were bidding against Bayern for Sané, Chelsea for Mangala and the rags for Otamendi.

For example we wanted Sanchez but couldn't afford it with FFP hoisted on Txiki and Arsenal got him. Txiki has made some big mistakes in the market, Mangala deal especially, but Cook had more of an open chequebook and there was some expensive flops there too. We also dodged a bullet with Kaka trying to break a world record fee on a player who was already on the wane with chronic injury problems.

 

[Tevez City]

Is he responsible for our regressing in the past few years ?

See how much he spent and how much we progress !

 

[its a Barm]

WTF evertime we loose a game its Txiki fault its laughable really.

 

[argyle]

WTF evertime we loose a game its Txiki fault its laughable really.

Tbf he has over seen some terrible buys and awful squad management, i.e. keeping ageing/past their prime players.

 

[Thaksinssoldier]

Tbf he has over seen some terrible buys and awful squad management, i.e. keeping ageing/past their prime players.

Yeah, Sane, Sterling, Gabriel Jesus. Terrible players.

I'd agree on holding on to players too long though.

Let's see him sell Dinho on for sure this season, lad is on a severe decline but some are just too blind to see it.