key cog to their defense and seeing him leave with no real replacement and the transfer window closing in a week means that David Moyes will have his work cut out for him. He played in every Everton league game the past two seasons, chipping in with 10 goals over those seasons. But the lure of the petropounds was too much and the defender will now join what appears to be the new "Chelsea" what I mean is the new big spenders in the Prem, not sure if the titles will follow. Lescott should make a good central defensive pairing with Toure and or Dunne. The addition of Lescott brings City a solid back line rotation when you have Richardson and Bridge on the wings, and can rotate Dunne and Ben Haim at various positions in defense. With Given as the back stop, Manchester City have the making of a top flight defense in the Premiership. As for Everton, it will be very difficult to replace the central defender. Much will be asked of Yobo to take on the leadership role in the back.Clearly Manchester City are announcing that they are serious about contending for silverware this season. I am not 100% convinced that the "sauce will take" this season, but over a 2 year span they have the resources to raise the bar in the Premiership.
2 comments:
Still don't see it as a great defense. Dunne, Lescott, Toure and Richards are all OK, not great. Bridge is solid, Given is solid. They've paid way over the odds for every player they acquired (aside from Barry, thought that was good business). And to spend this kind of money and not get truly world-class players is strange. Why not pay 100 mill for Ronaldo, rather than half that for Lescott + Adebayor?
I think that the sum of the parts should make this a solid defense. If we have learned anything is that you need depth. These additions, should allow City to bring their conceded goals number down, it certainly cannot go up! I think these additions should "save" 10 - 15 goals, maybe more. Bringing the goals against to the 25-29 range. To me that qualifies as a good/solid defense. Add into this the potential uptick in goals scored, and City are already at the high end of goal scoring with 58 last season, that makes for a good "mix."
To your other point, I completely agree that they have overspent. Is that any surprise? No. Manchester City has always been the "other" club in Manchester. I think you saw Chelsea doing the same thing, on a smaller scale, when Abramovich took over. They too spent, and over spent on players to bring them in. I would even argue that Manchester United tends to over bid on players - 30m pounds on Berbatov? 17m on Hargreaves? I do not believe Kaka was ever going to City, and I do believe that spending that money on multiple players is better for City than getting the one superstar from Milan.
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