TRon

Different attributes. Barnes can strike the ball better if anything in my opinion, but Ginola could skin defenders for fun. He was more of a traditional winger, dropping the shoulder, going past players and opening teams up. Barnes has less of the natural skill, but is more of a team man.

Even in that post you quoted I am making it quite clear that the criticism I am talking about is on a message board, not at the ground - which I don't agree with. Even then it should be reasoned and not just abuse which is just being a twat.

Bit of an indictment of Miggy and Murphy if they can't be considered to have impact off the bench but not every subs bench is going to have someone of Barne's quality.

Depends if the City lawyers can drag restriction of trade into the equation. I'm no lawyer so might be barking up the wrong tree, but there must be something the City legal team believes gives them some credible defence.

Exactly. This isn't even fan driven, it's something the club have openly been looking for for 12 months now. Ideally an understudy for Schar, don't think we really expected a Guehi type of signing at this stage of our development, but the club chose to pursue it.

Yes. Because the only teams it's really disrupting is the cartel clubs, and if City can avoid serious repercussions for spending their money, hopefully we won't be prevented in the future.

Even then we won't have the spending power of the cartel clubs with their already built worldwide fanbases. We need to be able to invest our own money.

This is a message board, it's not on the pitch. If I was at the ground I'd be cheering the team on, not picking over the bones of a game. That's what these forums are for. Otherwise all we'd do is type TOON TOON...black and white army!

Every professional player should give his all, that should be a given. Doesn't matter whether they are local or from Botswana. I just don't see the point of taking discussions in this direction, otherwise why don't Liverpool play a team of scousers and be happy with them giving it their all in whatever division they end up in?

It wasn't all his fault for the goal, there was quite a few mistakes from others which compounded his. Don't really know what people write on social media if you are talking about that so can't comment. It's a subjective thing. You mentioned disliking Sissoko and I actually thought he was much better for us than he was given credit for. At least we got £30m for him so it wasn't all bad.

It's pointless having a discussion board if we aren't allowed to give honest opinions. What's preventing giving a reasoned defence of the player rather than telling people to fuck off? Could just counter by saying Longstaff brings this or that to the table when he plays. Far more effective.

Just to get back to this - people are wondering why everything seems to have gone quiet on the stadium development/training ground/multi-club models etc - My theory is that PIF won't be that motivated to invest massive amounts in infrastructure if we aren't allowed to do the same with the squad. It's a successful team on the pitch that brings glory at the end of the day, not a nice training ground or state of the art stadium. Maybe they are holding their horses and seeing how long it is likely to be before we can realistically challenge for the title.

They are both taking the piss, just comes down to PL judgement at the end of the day. Since I don't believe PL officials are impartial due to their own interests, I would rather see them get burned personally.

Let's see if it gets called as fraud eventually, or creative accounting as some clubs practice by selling hotels to themselves.

It's better for Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool. It won't be better for us because the PL as an institution has brought in laws which stop new owners from investing as much as the currently established old guard. The same laws which they'll use to hammer City, you can bet they would use to hammer us if we tried to spend at the same level as the cartel clubs.

If there's 18 months left on his contract then there's good reason to be wary. Tricky situation really, he's not played enough in the last 12 months to be handed a big new contract, but if we leave it too late he might decide to hang on until he's holding all the aces.

The PL don't actually favour Man City, they would hit them with everything they have on behalf of the old money clubs who are actually the equivalent of PL royalty. So we are talking about Liverpool, Man U, Arsenal. They are really only scared of escalating to a point where Man City's lawyers could hit them with restriction of trade stuff I guess.

We need him to have a good season. That way we can either offer him a new contract or get decent money if we can't come to an agreement.

We turned down £7m in January from the American side. I don't think we are getting money for him now so we need to use him, and he needs to make an impact when he plays.

Agreed. Truthfully, could not have complained if they'd won instead of us.

Just shows how hard it is to shift players if they aren't either young, or top standard. He's not even a bad left back, can only assume his wages are too high for most lower placed clubs.

He's making sure we can't buy a replacement by hanging on for the right move. What's good for him personally is shit for us as a club, so quite happy that he's not getting any game time.

The sooner we get used to this idea the better we will be served long term. It's not that any of them are bad players, but they all have a peak value which starts to depreciate over time. It's fine if you are winning stuff already or qualifying for CL, but when you don't, then that's another year and less money to play with to get you where you want to be.