Man City 2020/21 - General discussion

copen1945

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Hopefully, United will carry the current unbeaten run into the City game. With something at stake, City might abandon their usual conservative approach.
 

NicolaSacco

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They’re only a kick on the arse off £50m aren’t they?
You’ve picked an interesting hill to die on, arguing that a number that is less than 50m is, in fact, greater than 50m. I admire your persistence in the face of, well, in the face of the long-established order in which numbers go!
 

Schmeichel's Cartwheel

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This was United bench vs City bench from the game in December (and how much they each cost to their clubs):

Manchester United: E Bailly (£32.2m), J Mata (£37.1m), A Martial (£44m), D Henderson (0), Alex Telles ( £15m), N Matic ( £40m ), van de Beek ( £40m) Total= £208.3
Manchester City: I Gündogan (£20m), Z Steffen( £6m), A Laporte ( £57m), B Silva ( £43.5m), F Torres ( £20.8m), B Mendy (£52m), P Foden (0) Total= £199.3m

https://www.skysports.com/football/man-utd-vs-man-city/teams/428953
Why have you slightly inflated the cost of the United players?

van de Beek was £34m, Martial was £36m, Bailly was £30m & Telles was £12m
 

Deery

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You’ve picked an interesting hill to die on, arguing that a number that is less than 50m is, in fact, greater than 50m. I admire your persistence in the face of, well, in the face of the long-established order in which numbers go!
I was rounding up!
 

Thunderhead

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Why have you slightly inflated the cost of the United players?

van de Beek was £34m, Martial was £36m, Bailly was £30m & Telles was £12m
wasn't Martial an initial £36m but could go to £66 if certain conditions were met, League goals, Balon D'or etc
 

Schmeichel's Cartwheel

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wasn't Martial an initial £36m but could go to £66 if certain conditions were met, League goals, Balon D'or etc
It was £36 rising to £58 if we won the league, CL & he won the Balon D’or within 3 seasons or something daft. It expired a while ago anyway, and we’re still shit, so they’re not getting the money :lol:
 

MongeySpangle

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[

City buy a player and if he’s crap they just buy another player the next window, I may be wrong but it feels like you’ve bought about 10 defenders in the last couple of years untill you get ones that work, that’s a lovely luxury to have.

I don’t really care about Man City, it’s mildly annoying that they’re on a winning run but I’d feel worse about that if it was Spurs or any other small club. City is kind of meaningless and quite funny. They’re a cute club that names training grounds after recent goal keepers and have to have Noel Gallagher as someone to ‘represent’ them on sky sports as their legend, imagine Kevin Webster or Mick Hucknall going on sky to talk about United :lol: Bless Them.

It’s also funny seeing their fans crying and getting salty on here about their spend and trying to justify it.
The only defenders that Guardiola has bought that aren’t still at the club are Danilo and Angelino. One of which was involved in the swap deal for Cancelo, and what a signing that has turned out to be. The only other defender that you can say has underperformed is Mendy, the rest have really stepped up to the mark this season.

Even up front, Nolito and Sane are the only ones who still aren’t at the club. If you include Bravo, that’s five Guardiola signings in five years that are no longer at the club. So it’s completely unfair to say that City have just been playing trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t. Everyone has their value in the team and the vast majority of players have justified their price tag.

Let’s take a look at United’s defence. Maguire, Lindelof, Wan-Bissaka, Bailly and Telles? Can you honestly say that any of them have justified their price tag? You’ll argue that you can’t afford to just replace them like we can (which is an invalid argument within itself), but that’s irrelevant when the quality of your first team recruitment is far inferior to City’s anyway.

And I’m not sure what you get out of having this superiority complex from not caring about our success. It doesn’t really bother me what you think and that you find us ‘cute’ and what not. The fact of the matter is, the way things are going, we are eventually going to exceed United in terms of size and fanbase. Maybe you’ll start caring then.
 
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SqualorVictoria

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It was £36 rising to £58 if we won the league, CL & he won the Balon D’or within 3 seasons or something daft. It expired a while ago anyway, and we’re still shit, so they’re not getting the money :lol:
8m plus was already paid according to some reports back at the time when he scored his 25th goal.
 

Sylar

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Perfect storm for City.
Probably the best coach in the world, with an already top squad he joined, and resources that only one or two other clubs in the world have to add to an already great spine of a squad he had (and a set up that was made for his arrival).

It would have been more interesting if he joined whilst Fergie was in prime years as a coach, Liverpool of last few seasons, along with the Chelsea under Jose (or him having all this whilst in the 03-10 seasons). I think thats when the English clubs were at peak esp in Europe.
 

Mb194dc

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Lots of teams have spent mega money but the difficult part is making a team with whoever you buy. Generally buying a bunch of galacticos doesn't work well. Barcelona being the most obvious example recently.

Key reason why City are such a a machine could be that they don't really have mega star players despite spending a lot of money. They're a complete team and even taking de Bruyne out made little difference to them. 21 wins in a row with aggregate score of 55 to 8 is just ridiculous.
 

Nou_Camp99

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2bn spent and got to less CL finals than Spurs. Hahahaha.

You clearly can't buy everything it seems.

City fans must love what's happened to their club for sure but in truth it's not been good for the league. We are now living in an age where unless you're a oil club you can almost forget it. You might win the odd cup or even the league every now and then when City have a blip but nobody can dominate now.

I mean they have had to even bring in financial rules to slow it down. PSG n City aren't good for football even if their fans must be loving it.
 

Zlatan 7

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The only defenders that Guardiola has bought that aren’t still at the club are Danilo and Angelino. One of which was involved in the swap deal for Cancelo, and what a signing that has turned out to be. The only other defender that you can say has underperformed is Mendy, the rest have really stepped up to the mark this season.

Even up front, Nolito and Sane are the only ones who still aren’t at the club. If you include Bravo, that’s five Guardiola signings in five years that are no longer at the club. So it’s completely unfair to say that City have just been playing trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t. Everyone has their value in the team and the great majority of players have justified their price tag.

Let’s take a look at United’s defence. Maguire, Lindelof, Wan-Bissaka, Bailly and Telles? Can you honestly say that any of them have justified their price tag? You’ll argue that you can’t afford to just replace them like we can (which is an invalid argument within itself), but that’s irrelevant when the quality of your first team recruitment is far inferior to City’s anyway.

And I’m not sure what you get out of having this superiority complex from not caring about our success. It doesn’t really bother me what you think and that you find us ‘cute’ and what not. The fact of the matter is, the way things are going, we are eventually going to exceed United in terms of size and fanbase. Maybe you’ll start caring then.
It’s not meant to bother you that I find it cute that sky need to dig out musicians to go on their show for you.

when you exceed Man Utd in terms of size and fan base I’ll be long gone so that’s irrelevant. People didn’t know you existed ten years ago and you’re already crowing about being bigger than Man Utd, it’s funny.
 

Josh 76

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The scary thing is most of their core players are 26 or under:

Ederson (27)
Cancello
Laporte
Dias
Stones
Zinchenko
Rodri
Foden
Sterling
Torres
B. Silva
Jesus

They will Probaly add a couple of young world class players to this in the summer too.
 

HerbT

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You do realise our owners take money out of the club and pay part of (their debt) every year about 100m. That is more than 1b pounds since Mansour took over city and poured 2b into city.
You’re labouring under a misapprehension.
The Glazers didn’t have the money to buy United so they used a leveraged buy out and therefore the ‘United debt’ doesn’t belong to the owners (it is not ‘their’ debt) because the loan was secured against the club, not against the owners.
The club repays the loan, that the owners took out against the club to buy the club, and if the owners disappeared tomorrow the debt would still remain effective and the club would still have to repay it.
As the debt is slowly repaid to the banks by the club, the value of each repayment transfers to the Glazers. So the £100million of debt that is repaid annually is United giving £100 million to the Glazers.

Thus the £1billion that you estimate has been paid off, what you errantly presume to be the owners debt, translates to being £1billion of United’s profit gifted to the Glazers rather than invested in the club.
 

robinamicrowave

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Don't think City fans mind being lectured about our spending - we know that everything we have comes from the Sheikh's billions - it's just funny when it comes from United fans.

If a fan of a team lower down the table was gonna lecture us about our spending, fair enough. But every time United don't win, this forum is full of people crying about Woodward needing to spend £150m to replace Maguire and Lindelof, who cost over £100m themselves. Pogba was a world record signing, Lukaku was bought for how much? You've actually beaten City to the signings of Fernandes, Maguire and Sanchez in recent seasons (and Van Persie before them). Liverpool also beat us to the signing of Van Dijk.

If a Palace fan or a West Brom fan wants to have a go at City for their spending, fair enough. But United? It does make me chuckle whenever your lot start blaming City because your £190m back four doesn't know its arse from its elbow.
 
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Pep's Suit

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The scary thing is most of their core players are 26 or under:

Ederson (27)
Cancello
Laporte
Dias
Stones
Zinchenko
Rodri
Foden
Sterling
Torres
B. Silva
Jesus

They will Probaly add a couple of young world class players to this in the summer too.
Probably another reason why Pep will sign another extension.
 

Tarrou

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2bn spent and got to less CL finals than Spurs. Hahahaha.

You clearly can't buy everything it seems.

City fans must love what's happened to their club for sure but in truth it's not been good for the league. We are now living in an age where unless you're a oil club you can almost forget it. You might win the odd cup or even the league every now and then when City have a blip but nobody can dominate now.

I mean they have had to even bring in financial rules to slow it down. PSG n City aren't good for football even if their fans must be loving it.
I don't think this is true and it's not that bad

United have almost kept up with City's spending and we actually have owners who take money from the club. Our failure to compete is our own fault. If we spend/spent well and make good decisions, we'd be able to compete with them.

There have always been clubs who spend more. Blackburn did it shortly, Chelsea came along and did it. And now City, and it's not that different. The other clubs can still win major trophies if they are managed well.
 

united_99

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They have done a lot right since 2010 whereas we have done a lot wrong.

We went from one extreme in SAF’s last years (buying cheaper mediocre players while missing out on quality players because we didn’t want to pay 6 mil agent fee for Hazard and so on) to the other extreme immediately after he retired (breaking club transfer record on Mata when we had no idea how to use him, and until today no manager has used him in a way which could even remotely justify the fee, nor have we sold him and now he is still here on high wages and not young anymore + so many more and even more expensive examples after that).
Not only take our owners unlimited money out of the club, but even worse they have no idea how to spend the money we do invest in players. They just rely on the manager to get everything right (which mostly hasn’t worked so far).
 

ExecutionerWasp001

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He has actually already sold 23% of the club for £654m, so he’s on track to sell the club for well over £2bn as a minimum. The most recent transaction valued the club much higher.

- In 2015 he sold a 13% stake to China Media, a Chinese consortium, for $400M (or at the time £265m)

- In 2019 he sold a 10% stake to Silver Lake, an American private equity firm, for $500M (or at the time £389m)
It's easy to sell parts of a business if you are taking on all the liabilities. A large proportion of your revenue still comes from Mansour directly & indirectly explained in more depth here


Mansour could never sell City as nobody would buy it. If he wanted to walk away a large chunk of your revenue goes with him. You don't make enough independant commercial revenue to make the business sustainable.


I’m not sure what you get out of having this superiority complex from not caring about our success. It doesn’t really bother me what you think and that you find us ‘cute’ and what not. The fact of the matter is, the way things are going, we are eventually going to exceed United in terms of size and fanbase. Maybe you’ll start caring then.
Posting statements like this is a strong indication you are triggered. The True Blue bitterness extolled by Summerbee & Doyle et al will be ever present amongst your fanbase. You know as well as anyone the only way you surpass us in terms of size & fanbase is if we cease to exist.
 

NicolaSacco

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Posting statements like this is a strong indication you are triggered. The True Blue bitterness extolled by Summerbee & Doyle et al will be ever present amongst your fanbase. You know as well as anyone the only way you surpass us in terms of size & fanbase is if we cease to exist.
[/QUOTE]

I wonder if Liverpool fans thought the same in 1990
 

KiD MoYeS

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Anyone else just not bothered or impressed by their success? I think they will win the quadruple, they have a great manager and play great football, but it just doesn't feel that impressive or annoying to me.
 

AshRK

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Seems more big spending on the way. Can hate them all we want but they are run in a proper way. No dithering, but are ruthless in their approach.
 

Thunderhead

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Seems more big spending on the way. Can hate them all we want but they are run in a proper way. No dithering, but are ruthless in their approach.

Duncan Castles, must be fecking true then. He's just a walking troll
 

Judas

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To be fair their squad does need a good injection of more quality, hope Pep gets the money he needs so they can do the quad for a second consecutive season.
 

Giggsy13

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Seems more big spending on the way. Can hate them all we want but they are run in a proper way. No dithering, but are ruthless in their approach.
Easy to be ruthless when you’re a financially doped club propped up by oil money.
 

Mb194dc

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Seems more big spending on the way. Can hate them all we want but they are run in a proper way. No dithering, but are ruthless in their approach.
Total nonsense article...

No clubs will spend big in the summer, like January.

Covid will be ongoing and clubs priority will still be losing less or even just keeping the lights on.

Doubt there will be any big transfers at all.
 

Deery

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Looking at them last night the only position the need to strengthen is up front so I could see them get Kane, Haaland or Messi.
 

ExecutionerWasp001

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I wonder if Liverpool fans thought the same in 1990
You do realize we've been a bigger club than Liverpool for the majority of our existence. We were bigger than them even when they had their period of dominance.

It tickles me how many City fans think they are going to surpass us in any of our lifetimes. Our most hated rivals dominated for 20 years & still couldn't become the biggest club in England.

City may overtake Utd's & Liverpool's trophy hauls in our lifetimes but that won't make them a big club. The size of a club is measured by revenues, fanbase & global reach. City are a very long way off competing on these fronts.
 

Pep's Suit

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I think Castles lost all his sources in last 12, 15 months,or so. Don't remember the last time he was right.
 

Pep's Suit

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Garcia, Fernandinho will deffo leave. Mendy very likely, Aguero depends on next 7-8 weeks.

Then back-up LB (£12-15m), DM (£30-35m) will be signed. Plus ST but right now it's impossible to say which one.
 

bond19821982

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Seems more big spending on the way. Can hate them all we want but they are run in a proper way. No dithering, but are ruthless in their approach.
It's easy when you have unlimited flow of money.
 

united_99

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Posting statements like this is a strong indication you are triggered. The True Blue bitterness extolled by Summerbee & Doyle et al will be ever present amongst your fanbase. You know as well as anyone the only way you surpass us in terms of size & fanbase is if we cease to exist.
I wonder if Liverpool fans thought the same in 1990
[/QUOTE]
Liverpool actually show you that despite no league title for 3 decades and only one major trophy in 2005 (until their recent success) they still remained one of the biggest clubs in the world. Artificial or injected revenues can make you successful, but it is not remotely as easy to match, let alone overtake historical clubs in size or following.
 

Thunderhead

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Garcia, Fernandinho will deffo leave. Mendy very likely, Aguero depends on next 7-8 weeks.

Then back-up LB (£12-15m), DM (£30-35m) will be signed. Plus ST but right now it's impossible to say which one.
I'm not 100% sure Ferna will leave
 

AshRK

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Total nonsense article...

No clubs will spend big in the summer, like January.

Covid will be ongoing and clubs priority will still be losing less or even just keeping the lights on.

Doubt there will be any big transfers at all.
You do realise right even with covid last summer they spent close to 130million. If required they will again spend close to 100 million and further strengthen their squad.
 

Karel Podolsky

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2bn spent and got to less CL finals than Spurs. Hahahaha.

You clearly can't buy everything it seems.

City fans must love what's happened to their club for sure but in truth it's not been good for the league. We are now living in an age where unless you're a oil club you can almost forget it. You might win the odd cup or even the league every now and then when City have a blip but nobody can dominate now.

I mean they have had to even bring in financial rules to slow it down. PSG n City aren't good for football even if their fans must be loving it.
Surely ONE EPL Throphy is better than any CL runner-ups? No?