I don’t have much time for Xhaka throwing other players under the bus considering how many times he’s left his teammates holding the bag in the past.
I’m not worked up about Xhaka’s comments Josh Kroenke knew damn well CL was incredibly unlikely after they chose to do nothing in January. I’m just not that devastated about the inevitable outcome of having like 12 good players then absolute bums. On them if they don’t wanna invest in the 3 glaring holes we have
Good to remind myself of the numbers, my god we need a decent CF or two. Arseblog: “When you look at our ‘main’ players in that regard, and what they’ve contributed since January 1st the stats are stark: Gabriel Martinelli: 1 goal in 19 (and it’s 1 his last 21 appearances). Emile Smith Rowe: 2 goals in his last 18 appearances in 2022. Alexandre Lacazette: 1 penalty in 18 appearances, no goals from open play. Bukayo Saka: 6 goals in 20 appearances. Eddie Nketiah: 4 goals in 20 appearances, he didn’t score in 18 of those 20.” also:
Yeah but Artetas teams are hyper inconsistent. Either really good or 100% dogshit. There’s seemingly no in between. That has a lot to do with youth and lack of depth but bottling 4th like this with the lead we had especially to fucking Tottenham is disgraceful shit and everyone involved in the club should be disgusted over it. Hopefully they learn something from this and improve because god damn this is fucking joke. im also tired of watching this extreme high and extreme low shit. Give me some kind of consistency game to game Christ
Seems to me the season is a series of setbacks or injuries and fixes. Start the season short lose 3 games, get players in/fit and start winning, lose Partey and Tomi in January, get Partey back and play Laca as a facilitator, teams sort out Laca and he wears down, etc., etc. Teams with proper depth and without glaring deficiencies in key areas (CF) don’t have to constantly solve problems the entire season. We’re probably gonna finish 8th in both goals for and against. The former is a quality problem, the latter an injury one.
he might have provided some of that leadership a lot of people think we were missing yesterday i would definitely at least be interested in a 31 year old ilkay he’d be an instant upgrade to partner with partey and be one of our best players (when healthy) imo
Did anyone bother to look up his injury history before running on this tangent? After his first season with City, he’s been pretty healthy. 17/18 - Missed 0 matches 18/19 - Missed 7 matches 19/20 - Missed 1 match 20/21 - Missed 6 matches (5 of those were Covid) 21/22 - Missed 4 matches
I’d like to. He’s expiring next Summer but he’s 31 so I’d like a 1 season extension. That doesn’t change that you were all talking about a non existent issue
This is like Mbappe, no one is wrong here. He's able to be adequately rested there as well in terms of being on a rotation. We would need him for 60 games, so we would break him. The idea is we have a young squad and just paid to make like 5-10 players leave. In terms of actually running a club and trying to make some pounds along the way, he's not it. That's not to say he is bad or a slight on his abilities. IMO we need about 6-7 more players before we start kicking the tires on him
Yeah I don’t think there’s any issue with not wanting him. I just wanted to correct his recent injury history
all i’m saying is a hard no on ilkay gundogan would be dumb imo, but this is also an example of champions league being a determining factor for a player. it won’t be a factor for everybody we’re after, but it will be a factor for some i don’t think the willian comparison is fair here either imo
Nope, totally based off my memory of maybe 1 city season where I think he missed the CL run in and the end of his Dortmund career. Willpepe makes the correct point that health as a rotational player vs a key starter is big. Biggest thing is his age
Also in my lazy fact finding defense, the gold standard of truth even includes this under his “style of play”: “Despite his ability, however, he has often struggled with injuries throughout his career.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/İlkay_Gündoğan
I like Ilkay, but I have to think his wages would interfere with the longer term investments the club has been smartly making the last couple of windows.
Ilkay is damn good but why would he play hard for us Jesus, Hickey, Tielemans(not totally convinced by him), and another forward would have me very happy
Seems a lot for a player in his final year. We spent £145m last summer, if it’s similar this year I really don’t like dropping ~1/3 of our money on him. £145-Jesus-Hickey leaves ~£70m for CM, CF, and whatever else we need
I guess if Stan's credit card has no limit, sure. But he probably has a general limit in mind, that limit is probably a little lower without UCL and we need a number of good players this window. Just too much for him.
I think we all agree with like the player. I don't know who the other options are but if he's the first choice I'd rather pay a premium for him than settle for someone else on the cheap. we all thought it was too much for Ramsdale and White as well but I don't think anyone is looking to sell those players back. I don't necessarily disagree with you that it seems like a lot for a player with one year left, I'm just done worrying about trying to find value in the market. just find the right players.
Not that it’ll matter but Everton are gonna be scraping for their lives Sunday edit: or they might still be drunk from celebrating