For those beginning to hyperventilate that
Manchester City’s much-heralded transfer splurge is yet to break out of first
gear, this morning’s ramble through the long corridors of Wikipedia has at
least settled the fevered mind of this correspondent.
You see, I have been idly checking dates.
It is the kind of thing one can do in the slow-moving, sun-drenched days of the
close season.
On 28th July 2011 Sergio Aguero
swapped the red and white stripes of Atlético Madrid
for the sky blue of Manchester
City. A year earlier
David Silva had removed his white Valencia shirt for the last time
and also moved north into the cold, bleak steppes of North West England,
signing on the dotted line on June 30th 2010. It must have been
quite a week at the Etihad, for -- just three days later -- Yaya Toure ambled
through the front foyer with the air of a man in no hurry at all to do exactly
the same thing.
The three most iconic and influential
signings the club has made in the new, cash-driven age of success were,
therefore, all signed in the end-of-June-beginning-of-July
period of the summer. This means that the early bird getting the worm scenario
is not necessarily true in football terms. It is clear that the pressure is
very much on City’s Three Wise Men (Manuel Pellegrini, Txiki Begiristain and
Ferran Soriano) to deliver the goods -- top quality, well wrapped, pristine
goods at that -- in this summer’s transfer market.
Three seasons of mixed success in this area
have passed since City last landed a truly global footballing icon. That the £24m spent on
Toure, another £24m on Silva and the relatively huge (then) and bargain (now) £38m spent on
Aguero was handed over a good month and a half into the transfer season,
underlines the fact that the top transfers in world football these days take a
very long time to iron out....
To read the rest of this article click here to go to ESPNFC
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