Underwhelmed when they signed but turned out to be pretty good

[Zin 'messiah' Zimmer]

Richard Dunne.
Dragged from a boozer and ended up being player of the year 4 times.
Put his head where lots of players wouldn't put their luminous boots.
Zabaleta a close second

Yeah, I remember Zab v the dippers (1st season) and thought ‘wtf’, he made andy hill look like cafu (: thankfully a slow burner who became a bonafide legend of the club!

 

[burning blue soul]

Zinchenko and Milner

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Maybe Lampard, given that he was about 108 at the time.

 

[Cityfan]

I don't know if I was underwhelmed, but my ignorance of Ederson when he signed was near total and I wasn't that confident.
He has turned out pretty good.

 

[manchester blue]

Nothing like a good coat.

I literally was in Specsavers yesterday!!

 

[ScottSinclair]

Hear me out… Demichelis

Underwhelming for 6 months, positively surprised for the next 6 months and then a slow and painfull decline for 2 seasons.

Craig Bellamy was a lot better for us than than I thought he would be.

Tevez was actually a weird one, because I thought he would be the flashy star signing that were going to deliver sporadically while Adebayor were going to be the one scoring the amount of goals that were going to take us to the next level. So wrong about that.

Fernandinho to an extent. I thought he was a great signing but given his age I thought him to be relatively short-term. If you said in 2013 that he would still be with us in 2022 and one of the first names on the teamsheet deep into his thirties, I wouldn't believe you.

Negredo, short and sweet peak but I never thought he had that purple-patch in him. Thought we were bargain dipping in Spain for a solid but relatively mediocre journeyman but he was probably the best striker in the world before christmas that season.

I will hold my hand up and say I was very disapointed by Gundogan until last year. I was happy when he was signed because I liked him at Dortmund, but as time went by I thought injuries had gotten the best of him, he struggled to impact matches and I thought he was levels below the likes of Kev, Merlin, Bernie and Fern in any of the positions he were deployed in. Then came his scoring-streak and his confidence just turned him into a machine of a player. The stuff he were already doing well like recycling posssesion were still there but he started playing with a swagger that made him control almost every game he played. Will now remember him fondly for us whatever he does next.

Mpenza. Only knew about his brother, who were a bit of a nothing-player and this guy were on a free in february or whatever it was. Had no expectation whatsoever but he did end up scoring the goals that kept us up, and for that he is probably one of the biggest bargains in our history depsite fading into obscurity at the end. If we had gone down that season I have no idea where we would be at now.

Zabaleta is the ultimate pick for me. The way he evolved into the beast he became was very surprising and fun.

 

[HarrytheBlue]

Obviously its all relative and some of these guys would not get anywhere near the team today

but step forward Sir Shaun Goater - remember being decidedly unimpressed that a guy trolling around with Rotherham would be able to do it at City - took a while to settle but once he was up and running he became a real goal machine

To be fair, Shaun's was one of the names constantly on the teleprinter on Grandstand on a Saturday afternoon in one particular season before he joined us. So I'd heard of him without knowing how good a player he was.

 

[Keepingthefaithsince1976]

Neil Pointen, Ian Bishop.

 

[Citizen Mike]

Strange one - Andy Cole. I thought he was past it and that he scored one for every three chances.

he turned out to be more skillful than I thought and brought the best out of Vassell

 

[BlueMooner87]

Craig Bellamy, a bit petulant at times but he really knew how to finish