I agree they excelled but more players that big clubs buy are because they excelled. Any player you will find at United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Bayern, Barcelona or even Tottenham are there because they excelled to some degree at their previous club. My point is that these are not players that the very elite teams were fighting over because they were world class certainties. City even regularly missed out on big targets to direct rivals because they wouldn't pay like Fred, Van Persie, Jorginho or more recently Harry Kane. So it's not like they just cherry picked the best of the best and no other team could compete for the signing. The only one that fits that category is Haaland.
Bernardo Silva - Footballer
- Thread starter roonster09
- Start date
Exactly, it's not like Bernardo Silva wins big games for Portugal. Or Dias looks like a world beater. Look at Cancelo this year at Bayern, this is a guy who was one of their players of the season last year. It's exactly like you say, they just play in a system that extracts the most of their best attributes and hides their weaknesses. People always talk about players level like it's an absolute. When in reality, top players are good at certain things, great at others and average at the rest. The environment they play in from system, teammates, league, etc will usually decide the level of their overall contribution and ouput. The exceptions are so rare and you'd have to go to a really rare breed who are not as affected by the aforementioned factors.
Fair enough! I also rated Gündogan highly back then but it was also the caveat that he was playing for a Dortmund team whose players could up in the Hummels and Lewandowski category or the Mkhitaryan and Kagawa category.
Literally every big club bar Barcelona - who'd just won the treble and had a settled starting XI - and Madrid - who's spent big on James just a year before and got a monster first season from him - tried to sign De Bruyne from Wolfsburg. Hell Bayern even saw him as their ticket to retaining Guardiola beyond his then-current deal
He was Belgium's best player in 2014, and he was the best player on the pitch against Brazil in 2018. He's been a top 10 BdO more or less regularly for the past 6-7 years, finished 3rd last season and has consistently been in the BdO conversation since at least 2017
Bernardo Silva is another player whose quality was known, most big clubs wanted him City just moved at the right time
Gundogan was THE hottest CM around in his BvB days before the injuries
Rodri had been touted as Busquets heir since his debut at Villarreal. Graelish is the british transfer record. Mahrez lead Leicester to a PL title. Ruben Dias was one of the most highly rated young CBs around, so was Laporte...
I really feel we are saying the same thing. Real still got James instead of him did they not? When do Real baulk at that calibre of players? Doesn't that show that Real maybe felt they had a player of equal or at least close talent level? How well did James perform? Barcelona won a treble but their midfield was still Busquets, Rakitic and an aging Iniesta. Iniesta was leaving in not too long. Your point is Bayern is still linked to Pep. They wanted him for Pep.
Of course he did produce some brilliant performances for Belgium but I am not arguing that he is an average player made to look good. I am arguing that he is a top player being made to perform at ridiculously high consistent levels only in Pep's environment. I don't think KdB could do for Barcelona for example what Iniesta was doing for them. I don't think KdB's output for United would be higher over a long period of time than Bruno. Your point about him regularly in the top ten for Balon d'Or is again what I feel I've been saying. That's when he plays with Pep, but top 3 which is usually reserved for the Mbappés, Lewandowskis and Benzemas, ... he was there once, and rightfully so because he never had a CL defining contribution until this year.
I remember wanting this guy when he was at Monaco.
Hadn't seen or heard much of him then and have been surprised at how well he's held up in the Premier League given the stature. Much like Mata and David Silva, I've been all too pessimistic about diminutive players until they've gone and lit it up.
Silva's out of the question for United but seeing him shine in the moment at the same time Amad Diallo is tearing it up in an extremely physical league im all the more hopeful for what Diallo can bring for us.
I would even go a step further and say that many of those who are not as affected by that it are not the players you want in a top team. When you're trying to build a worldclass collective anyway, you look for the players who are best when playing for the best team, not for those who may be better in a worse team but worse in a strong team.
Bernardo Silva for instance is a player that would look far weaker in a relegation team since he likes to have the ball at his feet as often as possible. He also needs players to connect with or to at least distract the opponents since he won't outpace or outmuscle defenders when he's isolated from passing options. Specialists are the way to go these days.
The guy who has one shockingly awful season in every two?
Think about this for a moment. You are arguing that Pep is less talented than Ferguson because he doesn't buy as many below-par players as Ferguson did.
If Fletcher, O'Shea, Chicharito, and Welbeck were as poor as you say, then by definition SAF deserves criticism for buying them... because clearly if his squad was filled with average players (as you claim) then his talent ID was miles off.
Most teams dont have an infinite budget. Your knowledge of football from 10 years ago is miles off
This isn't true at all. These City players were highly sought after. B. Silva was heavily linked with us, I even remember him saying he spoke to friends he knew at United. Mahrez is another one. De Bruyne was like one of the hottest properties in europe. Come on.
Me coming into this as a third party was exactly what you did on that months-old post you quoted.
There's no anger and condescension in my post -you may want to look closer to home for those traits- just surprise and mild amusement, or probably more bemusement, that after watching our rivals win a crucial game, someone sees the silver lining of that being the chance to prove someone on the internet's view from months ago was wrong.
Nah, he's right. Poor form and we expect a little better from a staff member. His post was hardly incendiary and your anger seems a little odd.
I remember wanting this guy when he was at Monaco.
Imagine if Monaco had kept that 2017 squad together. It's a shame but that's how modern football is. The big teams will always have the resources to offer big sums of money for top prospects, which is almost always too tempting for the selling club to reject.
And they were not.
There was no anger, I don't get that part.
I’m not sure you know what you’re talking about here…
This is one of the worst posts I've ever read on here. 3 of those players were academy products who Fergie got the most out of because he didn't have an unlimited budget (it's also a nice idea sometimes for a club to develop players that weren't signed on multi million pound deals). The other was a bargain basement punt for about £6 million who he managed to get a 20 goal season out of.
The Fletcher example is particularly bad as he was a player the majority of our fans didn't rate, but SAF kept him as a squad player and was rewarded for his patience when he became one of our most important players and was instrumental in getting us to a CL final which he them missed thanks to awful refereeing in the semi final.
Because of the ruthless nature of City's organisation, patience is a notion that has been lost amongst fans and owners of the big clubs in this country because they are constantly playing catch up and that is definitely not a good thing for the game long term.
I don't see any anger either. It is weird to call out posters after months but that's the caf and I'm sure we have all been guilty of it.
Fletcher and O'Shea weren't meant to be anything more than squad players, and they played their roles in United's success in the late 2000s. Hernandez was inexpensive and was crucial in the 2010-11 title win which more than justified his meager price tag.
There are better examples, if you want to argue against Ferguson's talent evaluation skills. None of the players you mentioned were flops, or cost enough to merit heavy criticism even if they were considered flops.
We talk about Haaland but City having this guy, KDB, Gundogan AND Rodri as a midfield is the real cheat code.
Wow, please go to anger management or something dude. No need for this. white text just in case
Too right - especially with Delph. I thought Diaz was rather highly rated though, not that I had heard or watched him much prior - just remember the media and other supporters rating him.
I'd say Kim Min-Jae is rated/hyped more than Ruben was,
Similar rate with Lindelof before his move to United, even one Portuguese poster said Lindelof was the better one
Similar rate with Lindelof before his move to United, even one Portuguese poster said Lindelof was the better one
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Tell me you’re a kid without telling me you’re a kid.
What a player, having one of his best player in the league spells again by the looks of it
Hahahahaha
One of the most pathetic pens you'll ever see. Well in 'Nardo
I still can’t process that penalty.
At least Kovacic gave me a chance to try though
At least Kovacic gave me a chance to try though
What on earth was that? He disgraced the memory of Panenka tonight.
Probably just delighted he for once got to do something he wanted and not play like a fecking robot every second.
Knob
He does it quite often i believe, shooting in the middle for pens.
Phil Jones would have smashed it top left corner
It can't be that often, it's the first penalty he's ever taken in a match!
The actual conversation: "Stop the ball from going in and you'll be golden"
I got told I look like him whilst in a bar in Munich last Tues. Felt insulted.
It has to be the worst penalty ever, right? This is the risk with Panenka, you can look like an idiot when it doesn't get in.
The keeper should have saved it with chest or head for extra humiliation.
The keeper should have saved it with chest or head for extra humiliation.
That penalty goes in 90% of the time. Just because it looks silly the few times the keeper decides to stand there doesn't make it any worse than any other pen put down the middle with a bit of height.
One of the pens where somebody sticks it in the stands is the worst ever.