Rico Lewis isn’t unbelievably good, in my opinion. He’s a bang-average ‘system player’ who Guardiola has typecasted into a very niche role. He’s an ‘inverted fullback’ who moves into midfield in possession but he can’t really defend, he’s not particularly quick to adjust as a wingback, lacks physicality to play as an actual defensive midfielder and his football intelligence isn’t all that either. Really average and overrated player. They’ve let far better talents go. Cole Palmer is the obvious one but Roméo Lavia and Morgan Rogers would also walk into their current starting XI given their injuries to Rodri and how piss-poor their wingers and creative midfielders have been this season. They’ve also only got one striker in Haaland so Delap might’ve got decent minutes this season too.
Well it works in opposite way, usually we are collecting deadwoods of Fener and I am not sure we can profile Maribor lower than Hull, smaller economy but they have a European tier which is a dream for us, and they have Tetteh, if we consider him as deadwood for us.
Going to controversial here. I think someone at the club needs to grow some and firstly tell the loan players with the option to buy they have not shown enough so far to be worth a contract. Secondly tell the players out of contract this year some have them have not shown enough to be renewed. Gives the a chance to respond or not. If not they are going to find it hard to find a club willing to take them unless they take a huge cut in earnings
Well if we are going down, they probably don't want to renew anyway, I mean at least high-profile ones for the league. It can backfire and they might even close the season on their mind. This conversation should have been done months ago, when they signed for loan.
Thing is these players will think promoted sides will be after them for their Championship experience forgetting the sides likely to be promoted have seen how abject they are at this level and not bother
What was Acun on about when he said the club would be ‘protected’ regarding the Zambrano loan and the doping charge? He said it in one of the Q&As, the second one just before the summer transfer window closed. Can we cancel his loan or what?
Yeah, it's weird that that's never been addressed. Baz Cooper seemed to have been told something about it at the time as well, but he now sounds quite critical of the fact we're paying Zambrano's wage whilst he's banned. Maybe the 'protection' was that we'd have the option to cancel the deal if we wanted to, and perhaps we're still waiting to find out the outcome of his appeal and the extent of his ban before deciding how to proceed. But presumably, there is a belief that he'll be banned only for this season and that it'll be worth sticking with him on that basis.
I imagine Zambrano is likely on a pittance though. If his ban is shortened and this results in us having him as ours next season then it will have been 100% worth it
5 England caps and 75 senior appearances for Man City by the age of 20. No, he's ****. Of course he's good, by any metric he's a quality player.
Our draw for European based players is the fact that we're one tier lower than the PL and it's easier to be noticed playing in England than it is in Slovenia. That being said, with Maribor regularly qualifying for Europe and being a bigger club in that country, it wouldn't surprise me if a player turned us down to go there.
Sorry, my Spanish might be a bit off here, but does that say it would cost us £20m?! No way that's correct, we wouldn't agree to that.
I think it means his wages would be covered in the event we were stuck with him. We can send him back I think if we wanted to, I hope we don't and we buy him, but come January Selles might think otherwise.
