Manchester City

[Le Chef]

Something like that.
The very idea of Guardiola saying that his team needs help from the transfer market.. he is vastly over-rated as a manager imo. He is utterly and always has been dependent on teams spending a bunch of money. When was the last time a City graduate - a local boy - made it into the first team on a regular basis?

I can see where he is coming from, TBF City's youth has been good, Foden, Rico Lewis, Bobb, and some more in the pipeline

[spud_gun]

They appear to have sold their best youth players

Selling Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers are fairly serious mistakes from a Citeh perspective

[frank the tank]

They have done so ****in bad in the transfer market

They obviously sold the likes of Alvarez and Palmer to.hwlp with ffp but signing Doku (56m) and Nunes (60m) for what you sold Palmer and Alvarez for has been a car crash.

[baitman]

They appear to have sold their best youth players

Selling Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers are fairly serious mistakes from a Citeh perspective

City have built a massive youth player production line facility. The purpose is to generate income to fund the purchase of star players and go some way to satisfying ffp.
No doubt they have been too premature selling the cream of their academy players.
They don't want to invest any time in a players development as too easy to spend the corrupt cash.
Maybe that will change.

[spud_gun]

As Frank pointed out above there's no point raising funds by selling of the Academy jewels if you're buying absolute ****e on the open market.

[Tatterdemalion]

Rico Lewis? Foden?

OK, am being a little ignorant, but still, as good as both are, I still think the majority of Guardiola's career has been built on transfer spend rather then home grown talent.

[spud_gun]

Messi, Xavi, Inesta, Busquets & Pique?

EDIT - Ignore Xavi and Inesta they were regulars by the time Pep took over at Barca

[red g]

They appear to have sold their best youth players

Selling Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers are fairly serious mistakes from a Citeh perspective

Frimpong, Lavia, Delap, Porro, Diaz, Gittens and probably more.

In pursuit of constantly winning, Youngsters rarely got a chance....Only Foden stayed the course.

I Imagine it will have future consequences as who wants to be at an Academy that doesn't get a chance with the 1st team.

[DerKrampus]

Foden was exceptional and played in a position they needed to fill.

He's absolutely fallen off a cliff this season though.

[Exiled_red]

Messi, Xavi, Inesta, Busquets & Pique?

EDIT - Ignore Xavi and Inesta they were regulars by the time Pep took over at Barca

What about Messi? Guardiola always seems to get credit for Messi, Messi had made 110 appearances and scored 42 goals for Barcelona before Guardiola took over as manager.

He gave Busquets and Pique their debuts, but Pique came back from Man Utd in the summer that Guardiola took over, that transfer had already been arranged, Guardiola gets credit for playing him but not signing him.

[spud_gun]

They're all products of the Barca youth academy.

[Exiled_red]

They're all products of the Barca youth academy.

Yeah but Guardiola seems to get credit for bringing many of them through or giving them their chances reality seems to be that many of them were established in the squad at the time he took over, he brought some through but not as many as some seem to want to give him credit for

[baitman]

They're all products of the Barca youth academy.

Exactly, whoever is this seasons coach has a supply of home grown tika taka midgets on tap.

[maxwellbaxter]

Truly incredible stuff

https://x.com/UtdBloke_/status/1875451677832270248

[Kenneth]

I can't see it without a twitter account. What's the story, briefly?