Pogba certainly would have been better off going to City, that's for sure.
Grealish would have been more important for us than he to City, but no doubt would have joined the massive flop list we have for almost every signing over 50m
Jack Grealish | Man City
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Grealish would have been more important for us than he to City, but no doubt would have joined the massive flop list we have for almost every signing over 50m
I’ve always thought Grealish would have suited us much more than he does city. Villa asked us for 80mil for him the season before city bought him, which is why we ended up with Donny van de beek instead.
I reckon we’d of got him for about 60mil and he would have been much better than Donny.
Yes Txiki does all transfers, I’m not sure Pep has chosen any since first season? Also yes on the risk taking - all the Michels/Cruyff guys are like that, LVG said the same when he was here. It’s about getting the ball into advanced areas, taking the risk and then just fouling if you lose the ball.
Beyond a simple look at the players Guardiola employed, or the signing he specifically asked for?
Sure. This is a 30 second google search(from a guardian article):
No, it is you who is crucially ignoring the fact that Haaland has 74 goals in 82 appearances for City - and that's with him struggling for fitness and being below his standards this season. Last season he had 52 in 53. There is no conceivable stylistical or tactical preference that would justify not wanting this player on your team
The first thing he asked Bayern upon signing his contract was to sign Lewandowski. At City he had Aguero and he still wanted Gabriel Jesus - a highly touted young striker. After Aguero aged out and Gabriel Jesus failed to make the role his, they spent a summer chasing Kane then signed Haaland
That's bs. Haaland was signed because 52 goals in 53 games
Doku and Graelish were signed because they were precisely the profile of wide forward player Guardiola wants. Graelish failing to work out as that player type is why they signed Doku, at that
For oppo fans? Absolutely.
It's pretty fascinating that some people are sure that Grealish would be great for us. I am pretty certain that we wouldn't improve our goalscoring with him, we would probably change from 54 goals a season team to a 51 goals a season team and more posession based team that draws lot of fouls.
But my point isn't that anyway, my point is that if you out any other good fullback instead of him and Real Madrid wins everything they've won with Carvajal too, simply because they had so many better and more important players than him.
Carvajal has been very good player, but I wouldn't say he was the best RB in the world for long period, because in those seasons the likes of Lahm, Alves, Juanfran, all played at very high level.
But my point isn't that anyway, my point is that if you out any other good fullback instead of him and Real Madrid wins everything they've won with Carvajal too, simply because they had so many better and more important players than him.
I already clarified the dribbling point, so that quote doesn’t back your point up. There’s a difference between Iniesta (world class dribbler) and Messi (world class dribbler) in the same way I explained to you already re Foden vs Doku but you have ignored.
Im not sure what you didn’t understand, I get Haaland scores loads of goals but the profile of player he is seems at odds with the usual type of player Pep likes. Nothing much else to that, I see nothing you’ve written in the text wall which proves anything. I don’t even think Grealish hasn’t worked out, he’s kind of fulfilling the role the recruitment team probably foresaw him doing.
Same season we signed Sancho no? I did argue quite a lot that Grealish would've been a better signing for us, and I still maintain that. Grealish and Burno I think would've worked together well.
Doku is a world class dribbler. Exactly what Guardiola wants in a wide forward. Him taking too many risks for Guardiola's taste is an entirely different matter - and that is something that can be coached. If he doesn't work it's not because he doesn't fit the profile, it's because he wasn't good enough. Guardiola wants elite dribblers - that's his type of wing forward > Doku is an elite dribbler wing forward > Doku is a Guardiola type player
Guardiola likes strikers who score a lot of goals. Haaland scores at rates matching and even outstripping Messi.
This is what i meant when I say him getting his breakout job with Messi warped perception. Barcelona wasn't Guardiola's "ideal type of team" in any realistic way, because Barcelona had Messi. Since "having one of the 3 best players to ever live" is not a particularly replicable stylistic/tactical choice, we have to look to his work at Bayern and now City to gain an understanding of the type of players and skillsets Guardiola prizes.
You think they spent that kind of money for a guy who struggled to nail a starting spot and whose prominence with the team rose thanks to his work off the ball? The same guy who was signed off the back of being one of the league's best attacking playmakers?
At Villa, he topped the charts with Bruno for number of chances created in the PL. Hojlund wouldn't be feeding off scraps if he had a LW who actually looked up and passed occasionally.
The quote from Pep about dribbling is not exclusive to that role though. He also says he wants his CBs and CMs to be able to do it because he doesn’t want any donkeys on the team.
I think more of how how he likes his midfields and thus how he needs/wants a striker to function. I do think at heart he remains a real Cruyff disciple despite evolving as he’s gone on with his career.
Grealish was pretty good last year wasn’t he. I don’t watch their games that often but from what I had seen/heard he’d been very solid. Re what they expected - they know how Pep plays and, as was my original point, I think he was a commercial signing more than what the team specifically needed. Look at the players with the biggest social media followings at City, Haaland, KDB, Foden and Grealish are the top 4. Grealish has nearly overtaken Foden since the move the City. That to me is his real value to them.
For some context Rashford has 17m insta followers, Grealish has 9m and Foden has 10m. They were heavily linked with Pacqueta - a widely followed Brazilian player (more followers than both City players) who is no doubt a good player but they were offering silly money again for a player who is around their peak and not an obvious upgrade for them. I do think there is a push now from the club to bring in more ‘stars’ as they look to push for more international fans.
He wanted Kane, a much older and very different kind of striker, over Haaland and got the latter because buying the former wasn't possible. Why? If he wanted only a great striker, why would he prefer the older and more expensive option?
He obviously sees some advantage in having a 9, otherwise he wouldn't have bought Haaland and would line up a team with only AMs, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't prefer a more link-up involved player on the position(one who obviously is world class and can score agoals, differently of Jesus and the like, before you say).
Things are not black or white.
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No. He wanted Kane in 2021 because Kane was potentially available in 2021 and Haaland wasn't. He wanted a striker for the 20/21 season. That's it. For fecks sake, once Kane fell through they tried signing a 38 year old Cristiano Ronaldo. They signed Haaland in '22 because he was available. Same thing
It's a meaningless distinction when it comes to a guy who scores as much as Haaland. Beyond that, inferring that Guardiola would prefer a guy who gets more involved in linking up play, contributing to the team's play on the ball in significant ways while scoring a shitload of goals is also pretty meaningless. Which manager wouldn't?
As a head coach you won't say no to player like Kane, Mbappe, Haaland or Bellingham. You adjust your tactics to fit them in, just like what Ancelotti does in Real Madrid.
I dIdn't mean a version of Halaand with Zidane skills, but one who could conciliate great goal scoring with great link up skills. Don't dissimulate like this, please.
Winning chances created imaginary league doesn't mean your team will score lot of goals, as it's already been proven with Bruno. It mostly means you have collegues who like to shot from around the box.
Between a guy who scores 50 goals a season and offers nothing else on the ball and a guy who scores 50 goals a season and offers something on the ball, anybody would take the latter. The point is if you have a guy who scores 50 goals a season, anything else you might get is bonus. Nobody is going to turn down Haaland because he doesn't offer enough on the ball outside of goals. A striker who scores that much is every manager's wet dream ever. That includes Guardiola. He just happened to luck out into spending his first 4 years coaching a guy who could score 50 goals a season while also being the best dribbler, ball carrier and playmaker the game had seen since Maradona. That's not "real". There is no one else like Messi right now, and the chances of Guardiola ever getting to work again with someone that good are next to none
Also, how is it meaningless?
Halaand is elite at put himself in good positions to score and at winning physical duels againts defenders, but to that happens(goalscoring situation), the team has to create space. Having a player who can do shit regarding that, therefore having a man less to create, doesn't look pointless to me.
Injured again or maybe sick.
I'm posting it here because I reached my post limit. This was already edited anyway because I had posted the wrong message.
Why do you buy a new striker(considering a team in City situation)? To make your team score more goals, right?
If you get a absolutely elite goalscorer, one of the best of all-time, and you goal tally don't upgrade that much, what does it mean?
1 - Your team are creating less or worse
2 - Your striker isn't as good finisher as you thought
More likely the option 1, so Halaand goalscoring is compensating the worse general production. The question is: did putting Halaand on the team make the playmaking worse or was the team production already fading before him? If you think it's the first, so yes, getting Halaand is not exactly the every manager's dream.
When you're creating, you are cornering the other team, then you have more control over the game.
The point is very simple:
Why do you buy a new striker(considering a team in City situation)? To make your team score more goals, right?
If you get a absolutely elite goalscorer, one of the best of all-time, and you goal tally don't upgrade that much, what does it mean?
1 - Your team are creating less or worse
2 - Your striker isn't as good finisher as you thought
More likely the option 1, so Halaand goalscoring is compensating the worse general production. The question is: did putting Halaand on the team make the playmaking worse or was the team production already fading before him? If you think it's the first, so yes, getting Halaand is not exactly the every manager's dream.
When you're creating, you are cornering the other team, then you have more control over the game.
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Yes, having a player who can make stuff happen by himself is better than not having a player who can't make stuff happen by himself. What exactly are you trying to argue here? We started from "Haaland is not Guardiola's type because control" to which I replied with "Haaland is every manager's ever type of player because he scores a goal a game". Are you trying to give a rebuttal to that, or what? I'm not clear on that
Haaland just scored 5 goals in a game made this discussion extremely funny.
City went from playing 3 - sometimes even 2 - defenders, plus Cancelo and a bunch of high scoring forwards, to playing 4 defenders, and putting 2 guys on the wing whose job was "press, track back, and make space for the Haaland-KDB two man game". They could do that and still field a world destroying attack because they had a guy who makes scoring goals so much easier. City had Gabriel Jesus - a guy who does everything other than scoring at an really high level - and he could never win the starting job. They then sold and replaced him with a guy who scores goals and does very little else. This guys is undroppable, even as they have another guy who does a lot of things really well and even appears to be a potentially elite goalscorer
What Guardiola wants from his main striker, the one constant, deal breaking skill, is scoring lots of goals. Anything beyond that is essentially gilding. If you have that, you get to play for Guardiola. If you don't, you won't play much for Guardiola. That simple. At no point during his managerial career has Guardiola not valued goal scoring above any other consideration
Same applies to dribbling, though here it's to a lesser degree since dribbling isn't as important as goals. He might drop an elite dribbler for a player that gives more control. He's still going to want a player who can offer both though, and only one of those skills is coachable...
I agree, I think he suits how we play wingers, how we have always played wingers, with freedom and excitement.
I assume you're being flippant as anyone who watched Grealish at Villa could see that he was excellent at putting chances on a plate for his attackers, and he did it with regularity. I watched most of Villa's games during the 20/21 season as all PL games were televised (and we were in lockdown so there was nothing else to do except watch football) and he was clearly the most creative player on the pitch in almost all those games. He was also an outstanding dribbler - which is something that Pep has drilled out of him unfortunately.
Feels like he would have had a significantly bigger impact at Utd,however he wouldn't have a treble tucked away in the back pocket
And how exactly that made them a better team? They aren't scoring more or conceding less; aren't controlling games as they did before. Yeah, they won UCL, but not because they played better; it was just that they were more fortunate in crucial moments, like the final.
Every trainer's dream is to have their team scoring more, but I don't know if they see any advantage in having their team scoring the same, but with the numbers concentrated in a player.
Being good dribbler at smaller team has been easier for many players, simply because you are are not double teamed any time you want to dribble and there is far more space on the counter too.
Pep drilling dribbling out of someone is laughable, he was benched by players like Doku and Foden who are direct dribblers and often lose the ball because they are too direct, and yet Pep plays them these days ahead of him. Doku is statistically the best dribbler in the league, why would Pep drill that out of someone playing that same position? And why didn't the drill it out of Doku?
Clearly City do, since they signed the guy, play him as much as they can, and appear highly motivated to keep him at the club
Yep. Graelish was signed precisely because of his dribbling, make no mistake. They just realized his dribbling skill is highly dependent on situation, and at City, he was asked to use it in a way that it didn't translate. He's a dynamic/transition dribbler/ball carrier. City often attack against set, positional defences, with the wide forward receiving ball to his feet and having to run at the defender from a standing start, and he lacks the burst and agility for it
City signed Graelish hoping to get a Hazard, and ended up with a smart, technically great water carrier. They made it work, but he's still a water carrier and they still want a Hazard
Defo, especially the way Ole wanted to play. Grealish would have been out on the left (as we saw his link up with Shaw in the Euros which was good). Think VDB was an odd 'replacement' purchase compared to Grealish, because they were completely different players (sorta like how we got Casemiro because we couldnt get DeJong).
Grealish also reminds me of when Joe Cole went to Chelsea under Jose. He had to play a certain style, against what he was doing for his previous team, and criticized cos he 'couldnt do it' in a winning team
Of course, theres every chance he would have still been seen as a flop for us, just due to the way we have been structured the last ten or so years, where weve seen numerous players and managers fall short and eventually get into bad habits.
Maybe Guardiola thought he could convert Haaland into a more participative 9(was Lewandowski as involved in creation before Pep? I'm really asking, didn't follow much Bundesliga back then).
Also, when you have one of the three biggest names in football breaking goalscoring records, you can't just sack him from the team regardless of what you think about the performance, especially if your team still good enough to win trophies.
decent discussion broke out in here! What the hell happened!?Nice to read @giorno @devaneios @tomaldinho1
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Nice to read @giorno @devaneios @tomaldinho1
It's interesting that many argue about chances created for Grealish in defense for his rather limited showing in terms of assists and goals during his time at City. What does actually chances created mean if they are not converted into goals? KDB plays in the same side and is able to deliver four assists in one game to one player. They play with the same players. I just find it a rather strange argument. You could argue the case for Bruno considering no other player at United is close to producing the same amount of chances or assists. However, when playing for City where there are an abundance of quality players and creators, the only standout arguments are that he draws a good amount of fouls (many of which belong in theatres for acting) and chances created, though not converted.
I think a much more interesting argument is how can he create so many chances but so few are converted? Lack of quality in that final ball perhaps...
I think a much more interesting argument is how can he create so many chances but so few are converted? Lack of quality in that final ball perhaps...
The difference is how they have spent it, we have Sancho and Antony not playing and they were expensive.
Exactly, not everyone can be the final pass on chances, there are good attacking players who benefit the team before that final pass. Though i think he's not good enough for city, he has his strengths.
I wonder if Jack will reply publicly to what Pep said.
I hate that kind of argument. How many goals he scores is irrelevant, how many goals the team scores is what matters and having an individual score a lot of goals can be a sign of a problem.
They scored more goals the season before without a striker.