CITY Guardiola has new transfer blueprint
IT is safe to say City’s January transfer window has not gone anything like they anticipated.
Big wins in December over United and Spurs left the Blues supremely confident for the rest of the season as everything Pep Guardiola touched turned to gold.
Alexis Sanchez was a possibility but not a necessity, and so strong was City’s position they could afford to put their feet up and look down at their rivals panic-buying to try and catch them up. How things have changed. Gabriel Jesus’s injury caused the Blues to go in for and then pull out of a deal for Sanchez, and that proved to be the first of several U-turns.
Aymeric Laporte, remarkably, has been catapulted back into the fray and looks set to sign for a club record fee, 18 months after rejecting the chance to join the club.
That is a signal of further worries about the defence caused by the fitness problems of Vincent Kompany and Fabian Delph, but also stresses a completely new approach to the transfer window.
The status quo for a number of years has been that well-run clubs get their business done early in summer (see Bernardo Silva and Ederson, 2017) and avoid January business if they can help it because it indicates not all is well and sees inflated fees (see Wilfried Bony, 2015).
Bedding-in your players with a full pre-season is much better than throwing them into a new environment at the business end of a season.
However, if the thinking in this postNeymar market is that clubs will be forced to pay more with each passing window – a view Guardiola currently holds – the textbook transfer policy needs a new edition.
Without even trying to predict trends for the long-term though, there is good sense in fast-tracking moves for Laporte and Fernandinho replacement Fred this month.
Just as the club have worked hard to get key players signed up to new contracts before the World Cup, there is no advantage in risking some stellar performances in Russia from inflating prices further.
And the fact there is a major tournament this summer reduces the value in a club pre-season anyway. City will still be heading off on tour to train and play a few warm-ups, but any players that make the latter stages of the World Cup will likely be recovering from that rather than rushing straight into club duty.
City are responding to developments in the transfer market in the same manner with which they have dealt with teams that have scored against them this season: swiftly and effectively. If they are similarly successful in achieving their aims, next season is already looking promising.