Txiki Begiristain

[Xhavenjoe]

I said we should have got Harry Redknapp as sporting director instead of this clown years ago and I am being proved right as every season passes.

 

[cheekybids]

Here's a list of some of the best signings Txiki has made in the 11 years he has been at the club:

Fernandinho
De Bruyne
Sterling
Gundogan
Stones
Sane
Jesus
Bernardo
Ederson
Walker
Laporte
Mahrez
Rodri
Dias
Ake
Grealish
Alvarez
Haaland
Akanji
Kovacic
Gvardiol


That's a pretty good track record if you ask me.

I'm gonna cut him some slack and pretend Mangala and Bony didn't happen.

You need a second list of expensive flops that he’s suckered others in then a 3rd list for our sales.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

@Ric can we delete this thread and start new one?
I was clearly spouting shit when I started it all those years ago ;)

You weren’t spouting shit. Just because he’s been doing a good job since Pep came to us, doesn’t mean he was doing a good job in the years leading up to Pep coming.

You said in your OP in 2016, ‘Under his watch the first team has regressed so badly’. And you were spot on!

We’d gone from winning the title twice in three years and finishing second in the one we didn’t, with a good balance to both title winning teams, with good depth, good fitness, four great striker options for both title wins…
To a team that wasn’t working hard on the pitch, we were ‘nilled’ 8 times that final Pellegrini season and scored just one goal on 10 other occasions; remember how poor we were in that away defeat to Stoke and where it looked like we weren’t trying in a home hammering to Liverpool?; we had four full backs all over the age of 30 who we’d kept for about two years too long and our striker options were just Kun with Bony and Iheanacho as back-ups when we’d previously had Tevez Džeko Balotelli Negredo and Jovetic as well as Kun; we just scraped fourth place on the final day on goal difference and on just 66 points, otherwise Pep would have been coming to a Europa League club.

I thought Txiki and everyone at the club at the time prepared for the arrival of Pep poorly and had allowed the first team to just slide into bad habits and allowed a standard of football to be payed that wasn’t good enough. And it’s the main reason why Pep struggled to get a tune out of them in his first season.

I thought the way the club were being run right across the boardroom from 2014-2016 was average. Being found guilty of failing FFP, whether goalposts were moved or not, and being hacked by a former employee going to Liverpool to have access to our scouting database, showed a massive lack of attention to detail.

And despite having squad spending and wage cap limitations, we still spent about £90m on Mangala, Bony and Fernando (which at that time was a big lay-out).

I don’t think anyone was wrong to have reservations and concerns about the direction the club was going back then and what Guardiola was walking into was not of a high enough standard in anything from fitness to workrate to quality to attention to detail to anything like any kind of holism (which was a buzzword at the time).

Since Pep’s arrived, Txiki seems to have learnt from past mistakes and is now doing a great job. He is overseeing and working with Pep very well. But nobody was wrong to have reservations back in 2016.

 

[cheekybids]

People call Levy a tough negotiator but he’s not. Just refusing to sell at any price doesn’t make you a tough negotiator, it makes you a stubborn idiot.

A tough negotiator would’ve got every last penny out of City for Kane.

An idiot blows the deal and let’s the player leave on a free / for pennies on the dollar a couple of years later.

Levy is a moron and the fact his club are used as a punchline is testament to that.

I read a book about negotiation Never split the difference, Chris Voss. He describes people like Levy (Trump) as always talking about the 1 deal they won by being a tough arsehole but there’s hundreds where people won’t.

Where’s all the hot young stars Spurs used to attract knowing they would be allowed to go to a bigger club. Spurs recent spending is worse than ours, clubs don’t want to deal with him.

 

[Fordyboy46]

It was funny to see so many City fans panicking on the Gvardiol thread, yet Txiki was probably as cool as fuck about it all from day one knowing it would get done. We just have to acknowledge him as being a great negotiator 99% of the time

 

[wythenshaweblue£££]

No need to ask
He's a smooth operator
Smooth operator
Smooth operator
Smooth operator

Tune

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

I read a book about negotiation Never split the difference, Chris Voss. He describes people like Levy (Trump) as always talking about the 1 deal they won by being a tough arsehole but there’s hundreds where people won’t.

Where’s all the hot young stars Spurs used to attract knowing they would be allowed to go to a bigger club. Spurs recent spending is worse than ours, clubs don’t want to deal with him.

Levy is a disaster for Spurs. He puts his ego ahead of his club all the time.

 

[Asa's left peg]

I think my favourite of his deals was Dinho. Not just because he was quality, but he must have said to the agent ' we're not giving you a signing on fee and you're going to have to pay your own release clause'.
Thats a great sell.

 

[RayCTID]

There aren't any better Director of Football in football. I wouldn't swap Tixiki Bergistain for anyone.

 

[LesBleuMiserable]

Brilliant had never seen that. His dog with the significant savings in its account may have done better.