It can be a number of reasons, maybe not one is on the club at the moment.
Nicolas Otamendi | City Player
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http://www.skysports.com/football/n...-city-enter-race-to-sign-pedro-from-barcelona
Manchester City have made a bid to sign Pedro from Barcelona, according to Sky Sports’ Spanish expert Guillem Balague.
Manchester United appeared to be in pole position to land the forward, according to Sky sources, but City have now made a move with champions Chelsea also monitoring the player's situation.
Balague says that United have not yet matched Barca’s £21.4m buy-out clause while City have.
Pedro does not want to leave Barca, but accepts that he may have to go if he wants regular first-team football, Balague says.
Nou Camp technical secretary Robert Fernandez said before Tuesday’s UEFA Super Cup match against Sevilla in Tbilisi that the Spain international had told him he wanted to move on.
Pedro of Barcelona kisses the UEFA Super Cup trophy
The 28-year-old then came off the bench to score an extra-time winner for Barcelona in a 5-4 thriller against their fellow La Liga side.
Speaking afterwards, Pedro was adamant the situation was not as straightforward as him simply wanting to leave the European champions.
Asked if he wanted to go or not, the winger said: "The answer is no, but it's complicated for many things.
Pedro celebrates after scoring the winner for Barcelona in the UEFA Super Cup
"It's not for money, as has been said - which is another lack of respect. It's a question of continuity, of minutes. I'm an ambitious player. Stay or go, I will always be of this team.
"Robert has made some very unfortunate declarations. I've crossed two words with him and he doesn't know what I've been through at the club to talk like that of me.
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"I know who I am and I will always be of Barca. Such people shouldn't speak in this way. I've not said what Robert's said, or at least not how I said it.
"I'm calm, happy and I will always continue giving everything if I continue at this club. Manchester? Yes, there are nice challenges on all sides.
Well they havent had a "No" regards to De Bruyne but have still bid for pedro so......
It would suggest City are going to be one hell of a force again. Implies, either United are not willing to go that extra mile and pay over the odds or the player did not want to come, so I wouldn't be p*ssed at United. Have to wonder why United have such difficulty doing business in Spain.
I agree, we struggled with Bilbao too. And the Di Maria signing seemed to take ages. Your right though, keeping Aguero, Youre returning to form and these targets would make them the best team in the league on paper at least.
Ballbag is quite good with Spanish transfers. City in for him and pedro would be a bit shit.
Andy Carroll. A striker, a young player, and a waste of money. Great comparison.
We also didn't really 'make money' on Di Maria, did we? If anything, that might put us off inflated fees...
Bad comparison or not to say ''nobody is spending'' £35m on this player is stupid in the current transfer market.
Because it takes two parties to make a deal happen. Three in fact if you include the player.
It seems pedro is still sorting some stuff out with his club. Whoever he goes to, it will be his decision . Given how fast we've wrapped up other deals I don't see why you people think we've been dragging our feet over this? You really think we can pay 25-27 million for Memphis and not 22 for pedro? This was always going to take longer because it's pedro and its Barcelona, and there's a strong connection there, and he clearly isn't as willing to move as schweinsteiger. It's easy to blame the club but given the way we've done our other business this summer I think we've earned a little bit of credit as far as transfers go.
Edit: seems I forgot which thread it was in
There's a tweet in tweets thread about City not bidding for Pedro so maybe we're in a fight with them for Otamendi only.
Im not giving the club any hate or moaning, I was just curious as to what might be holding this up a little.
If both clubs offered the same fee and wages, I have no doubt in my mind the players would choose us over City.
Mangala was a tremendously physical player prone to spectacular interventions and that, coupled with his younger age, raised his profile a lot. He mixed that with very poor brain power for a CB and a lot of fans went on the "if he irons that out he's going to be great" thing, which in my opinion is usually wishful thinking. "Potential" and such. Yet to be confirmed.
Otamendi was different, he was always underrated around here, but very consistent, and I think his exit - even though he was far from his best motivation at the time - and the hectic defending that followed underlined how reliable he was despite many of us not even noticing him, possibly much due to a usually bigger and more fan-friendly partner at his side. We certainly missed him a lot when he was gone. In hindsight he was always a hard-worker, a goalscorer and obviously talented.
I haven't seen him last year, but if he was that good I'm more prone to believe it's him sustainingly improving his game (from what was already a very good base) rather than a sudden upsurge of form. I can take that for goalscorers or confidence players like wingers, but I'd guess (based on nothing) that in a CB it's a sign of experience and intelligence that don't wane from night to day.
Robin Van Persie - And it proved to be the difference in 12/13.
Always warms my heart, you just know he isn't talking about City.
We will see.
Similar to Pedro, I don't believe at all that City are interested. If we wanted a CB so much that we'd be willing to spend the fees getting mentioned for Otamendi we'd have wrapped a deal up much earlier in the summer. Again, no English sources have even mentioned Otamendi to City as far as I'm aware.
Absolutely. Whoever got RVP won the league that season, IMO. If City got him, they would have won it at a canter, as we did.
In principle yes. I would have my concerns over Otamendi, City may suit him more, but if Pedro's reasoning for leaving Barca is he wants more gametime he quite clearly should go for us.
Oh you appear to have all the facts. So.....
I don't think we're in for him, LvG wants a ball playing RCB, he doesn't have that with Smalling and Jones. City could probably get him, Mangala wasn't good enough last year and they are really going for the title this year.
Avoiding a good hardman in Otamendi just because he wants a ball-playing CB is absolute insanity.
That's ridiculous. If you want your LCB to be left-footed you sure as feck should want him to be the ball-playing one as well.
I don't mean to jump onto any LvG-bashing bandwagon, but that's exactly the sort of stuff we'd better get used to. I followed Barca throughout the 90s and after he arrived and went all philosophical I just stopped. It was painful to watch how comical their defending was because he persisted in signing footballlers, not defenders.
Besides, it's not like there are ball-playing CB's available who are clearly an upgrade on Otamendi and realistic signings. The guy was a top 3 CB in La Liga last season.
There isn't a single decent left-footed CB available in the market. Not one. The good unavailable ones aren't ball-players either, so he may well be trying to make it easier to get a left-footer by getting the right-footer to be the ball-player. Problem is: most great stoppers are right-footed.
There may be better ball-playing CBs available, but at that point the issue isn't even Otamendi but what the feck has "Mike" done wrong to be out of the equation by virtue of not being left-footed or a ball-player.
He just has to get on with it really, FFS.
Laporte and Vertonghen. Both would come cheaper for that price tag. If we're not in for Otamendi we should be looking at both IMO.
He'll end up at City, it doesn't seem like we're interested and most of the talk around him appears to have been generated by United fans' desire for a new CB. I'm definitely not getting too invested in this one.
Laportes release clause is around 50 million euros too, he wouldn't be cheaper and has just signed a new contract. And you never know how much you have to pay if you deal with Levy.
Youd think van Gaal would go for Vertonghen, knowing him from his Ajax time. Either he doesnt want him or we dont want to deal with Tottenham.
Laporte is another matter, but Athletic suck a bit and expensive too.
Yeah it's a bit odd that LvG or us for that matter are not linked with Vertonghen. He fits very well in the profile LvG wants. Didn't know that Laporte has 50m release clause as well, and he's a bit inexperienced but either way there are at least 2 other options.
Who was playing defense then and how good was defensive record at the time?
yeah just checked it's 50m now.
I thought it was from last year when it was only 42m
http://www.insidespanishfootball.co...rte-raising-release-clause-from-e36m-to-e42m/
It seems he has signed a new one this year as well.
That horrible Dutch legion that could do anything but defend: Frank de Boer (ball-playing LCB anyone? but couldn't jump, or sprint, or aknowledge he was at fault constantly), Michael Reiziger, Winston fecking Bogarde...
The defensive record was OK overall because their possession was excellent, but every now and then and -most importantly- when it mattered most, they shipped goals left, right and centre.
Verthongen fits the profile but won't improve our defence one bit and certainly won't justify what Levy would squeeze out of us. Laporte is clearly not available, a young inexperienced player who just signed a contract and has a 50M release clause doesn't scream "available/in the market" at me.
He'll move to City I reckon. Will be a top signing for them.
is Vertonghen all that different from Rafael? Good technically but a bit haphazard and has a habit of accumulating yellow cards. Van Gaal seems to have an affinity for defenders of the Rio Ferdinand type, someone who anticipates danger and stays on his feet rather than go in for the tackle.
Wonder if Spurs are interested in him?
I´d pick Otamendi without a doubt. He was part of that amazing AVB Porto team that win the league confortably and the Europa League. Otamendi was always consistent excluding his last year with the indefinition and his wish to leave for a better league. Mangala was very good in the first year but then had problems in terms of consistency.
If City gets Otamendi and we fail to strengthen at the back we can kiss our title challenge goodbye IMO.
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