A fantastic photo emerged on social media this week featuring Manchester City’s five summer signings ahead of their 1988/89 season and seeing Brian Gayle, John Deehan, Andy Dibble, Nigel Gleghorn, and Wayne Biggins beam out proudly from a bygone era brought a warm glow of nostalgia. There’s Trevor Morley nine months later sliding one home at Bradford to secure promotion in front of a sea of plastic bananas. Good times. Special times.
The dated snap acts as a heartening companion piece to another line-up of summer recruits a generation on. From left to right Aleksandar Kolarov, David Silva, Yaya Toure and Jerome Boateng sit in the main stand holding aloft their new work apparel and standing over them, looking very much like the coolest cat that got the cream, is Roberto Mancini. He knows what lies ahead. The silverware won in the large part by Spanish Dave and Yaya as they reinvent midfield norms. He sees everything but his subsequent sacking and it’s there in his easy smile.
| David Silva:
“Genuinely, they [City] were the team who wanted me the most and went the extra mile. Other teams were interested, but Mancini got in contact a long time before the end of the season to see if I wanted to come here, and said I was a big part of his plans.” pic.twitter.com/MeszrpFYUN
— Superbia Proelia (@SuperbiaProeIia) December 3, 2018
Alongside one another the images starkly illustrate the quantum leap made by the club in what is, in the great scheme of things, a short period of time but what is particularly of interest is what they have in common. Both pictures celebrate in their own respective ways a regen; a new beginning and a great deal of excitement always accompanies that because as fans optimism springs eternal and there is nothing more optimistic than wholesale change.
This, of course, is not a thrill solely reserved for Blues. Across the game, from Barcelona to Berwick a highlight of pre-season is seeing that group shot of signings, all posing with first-day-at-school awkwardness because what you’re witnessing is the slate wiped clean. What you’re witnessing is the future, to that point unblemished and gleaming.
Which makes it a shame in a way that City no longer need to go in for this sort of thing even if the reasons for this are infinitely more exciting than an overhaul of personnel signifying a fresh start and hope. Why invest in a new beginning when you’re several chapters deep into writing a masterpiece? With an understatement on a par with stating that Jesse Lingard is slightly annoying why change what isn’t broken?
✍️Done deal! Welcome to the Champions, Rodri
#mancity pic.twitter.com/CJobsdj7lI
— Manchester City (@ManCity) July 4, 2019
So it was that Riyad Mahrez was the club’s only outlay in between titles and this summer too little movement is anticipated. Rodri has arrived, cherry-picked and long targeted while the recapturing of Angelino has common sense at its core. Beyond these two transfers Harry Maguire has dominated the City-related headlines but there are eighty million reasons why he will remain at the King Power or instead go to a faded power while City’s pursuit of Joao Cancelo is becoming less viable by the day. Finally, a recent link to Bournemouth’s Nathan Ake has all the hallmarks of a journalist putting two and two together with scant substance behind the math.
HARRY MAGUIRE TO MAN CITY – 5/4
By the end of this window it is perfectly feasible – even likely – that the number of new faces incorporated into City’s squad since January 2018 will amount to three. By comparison, from the takeover right up to January 2018 the average number of signings made – discounting those immediately loaned out – was 6.9 per year.
Why this slowing down of recruitment has occurred is self-evident and has played out before our eyes for two seasons now and more while 35 miles down the road in Merseyside, Jurgen Klopp is similarly favouring evolution over revolution, again for entirely obvious reasons. Presently both clubs are so far ahead of their peers as to only require maintenance of what has made them dominant. Perhaps a tweak here is necessary. Perhaps an upgrade there. It is down to their rivals to reimagine themselves at great cost and risk; those in effect with little to lose.
Final Premier League table:
1. Man City 98pts
2. Liverpool 97pts
3. Chelsea 72pts
4. Tottenham 71pts
5. Arsenal 70pts
6. Man Utd 66pts pic.twitter.com/DlH1Mt7CH9— Football Tweet (@Football__Tweet) May 12, 2019
And this truth brings with it a delicious irony. For when the next cycle of league football resumes it is the completed models of Manchester City and Liverpool that will excite and delight and enthral. It is they who takes the risks and push the boundaries of what is possible.
During the summer months though, as they tick over in virtual hibernation, there are few fan-bases more bored. Others get the hope and the optimism, delusional or otherwise. We essentially watch an idling supercar undergoing an oil change.
It’s the right way round: evolve in the summer to ensure that the good times – the special times – continue. We wouldn’t have it any other way. But all the same, with no Isco disco or similar transfer rumour razzmatazz, roll on the next instalment of the revolution.
