Donovan Next On The List For Manchester City
It looks like Manchester City are set to continue their summer spending and the next target for the Manchester club seems to be the American International, Landon Donovan. The LA Galaxy player was one of the brightest sparks for the United States at the World Cup in South Africa.
Manchester City have already out-spent every other club in the Premier League, already having acquired Jerome Boateng, Yaya Toure, Alex Henshall and David Silva and have one of the largest squads in World Football which makes their pursuit of more players seems a little crazy.
Although he is a very versatile player, Donovan will probably have to be content with a place on the bench for most of Manchester City’s matches since under the Italian manager, Mancini, City usually play with two holding midfielders and two offensive ones. Donovan will have to compete with players like Stephen Ireland, David Silva, Adam Johnson and Shaun Wright-Philips for the position, which makes it difficult to understand why City are looking for his signature.
Italian manager Mancini also announced that Manchester City are continuing their pursuit of Inter Milan striker Mario Balotelli and Aston Villa midfielder James Milner. Both those targets also appear to be a little bizarre since City possess a number of quality players in those positions as well. In the center of the park where Milner will supposedly fit in, City have his former teammate Gareth Barry, Patrick Vieira, Nigel de Jong, Michael Johnson and the new addition Yaya Toure.
Mario Balotelli, if he joins, will become the seventh forward in the Manchester City squad as they currently have Roque Santa Cruz, Jo, Felipe Caicedo, Craig Bellamy, Emmanuel Adebayor and Carlos Tevez on their team register. Although Balotelli is a talented forward, his temperament has been questioned time and again and given the fact that City have so many options to choose from, it will be interesting to see how the manager Mancini controls the player.
Pundits have said that Manchester City will be using a rotation system similar to the one Claudio Ranieri used while he was at Chelsea, when Roman Abromovic took over and brought a host of new players at the club. Although the system would make sense, given the number of players City have at their disposal, it is important to point out that Ranieri did not manage to win anything while using that system and it was only when his successor, Jose Mourinho, found a stable team that Chelsea managed to win a trophy.
The transfer for James Milner is perhaps the most confusing, since Manchester City bought the player he has replaced at Aston Villa, i.e. Gareth Barry. It is hard to understand the reasoning behind such a switch and with new players arriving every year, finding a settled line-up is going to get more and more difficult. More importantly, the pressure of the manager, Mancini, is going to increase substantially as the Middle East owners bring in the players he has asked for and if Manchester City fail to qualify for the UEFA Champions League again, the Italian manager will have to look for a job elsewhere after failing to achieve the target last season.
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