Goal are reporting up to four City players will be leaving including Richards, now seeing as we were bookies favourites it will be interesting to see if it comes off now we have played city. I think he could do a job at CB myself.
What is it about this guy? He's hardly played for City in past couple of years and I certainly don't see him as a CB. I say look elsewhere.
When he used to be a footballer, he seemed to be the Man City version of Steven Taylor, which makes him below Mike Williamson standard in my mind. If he wants another job in football, I hope he doesn't end up here, but if by some chance he does, I would of course welcome him with open arms and support him through thick and thin.
Prob just bull but reports coming out of Italy we have put in a bid for Richards, Napoli are also interest hence why the source is from Italy allegedly
So we're going to swap a centre back we usually play at full back for a full back to play centre back. Genius
I have said it before and I will say it again - hell no to Richards! No-one even knows if he is any good any more and even when he was good that was at full back and not centre back! At CB he is just another Saylor!
I think Richards is decent. I think he makes a better centre back than full back as he lacks understanding of how to offer cover to his centre backs. Positionally he has been suspect at various stages at full back. He always looked solid in his spells at centre back (which were few) I'm not convinced how much of a step up he will be on Saylor or Mbiwa who are similar levels of ability. The point is we are really looking for a step up on Willo, not those two. They have looked pretty hapless at times. Normally you'd think as a defender they improve with age so Richards could be entering his prime. The problem is he has been watching for 2 years so will not have developed. The concern is he just another Saylor or Mbiwa. Basically I've never been convinced this is the right move. We are just looking for short cuts again. In key areas, sometimes you just have to pay what is required to get the required quality. We have left it all too late now. We should have went for Caulker but didn't. You'd never get a Shawcross or Williams or Davies, someone who knew the league and would deliver. Its too late for their clubs to make alternative plans now. The only one I can think of you could try for is Daniel Agger. Is he really going to fancy a step down to Newcastle though? I'm not even sure how good he still is and is he not injured a lot?
Yes, the fundamental flaw with our "always looking for a deal" mentality is that the best players, even at "lesser" teams, are never available "on a deal"! They get rewarded for loyalty and ability, plus we have nothing specific to offer them. Headline manager? Nope. European football? Nope. Huge pay? Nope. We will be utterly hamstrung on this and ever-reliant on unearthing someone who just happens to work. Eric Dier would have been a great acquisition, though I'm not saying he'd have picked NUFC over Spurs - just mean that someone playing for Lisbon has come in for £4m and hit the ground running. This is where Carr has to earn his money, but by the same token we've also got to be willing to improve our CB's without having to sell one first.
For some reason I still follow him in case he gets something right, but I firmly believe he knows nothing at all. As is the case with most ITK accounts (although he's not purely an ITK account)
Surely this is a problem for anyone outside the top 6? Apart from us breaking the bank and becoming unsustainable which is exactly what our regime will not do, we have to settle for mid-table, knowing that we can only attract mid-table players. Man U will not reach the top 4 this season despite spending close to £200m in the past 2 years. Now if we spent £200m surely we'd be expecting top 4? We can't really attract players of a much better caliber than we currently have.
Yeah, but the relatively reliable GFF has said that MYM to Marseille is more or less done. I would imagine we've had informal agreement in place for someone like Richards until this deal was done, kind of Debuchy/Janmaat in reverse. Isn't Van Dijk joining Sunderland? Richards and Welbeck and suddenly we go from mediocre to big potential.
