Sergio Ramos

 According to reports, City will put an initial bid in of around £32m.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manchester-city-see-sergio-ramos-2800715

Any complaints?

Be more than happy with that. Has anyone seen the rumours about Messi...?

Yep I saw the rumour but like the paper said the deal would have to depend on so many other companies / Sponsors coming to the party I really do believe it is a non starter , plus the line about to much pressure on him in spain to perform? The rumour I wanted to be true was the one a few days ago about Isco fed up of being a sub. Even if that was true the injury to Khedeira will scupper that one. Names a plenty lets just wait & see & hope we get it right.

Messi won't be coming to us any time soon, or any time after that.

Instead of buying more and more attacking players, we should be focusing on what has been costing us games: our shitty defence.

Maybe if we'd spent £100M on 3 top class defenders, instead of midfielders and attackers, we'd be coasting this season.

I'm not so sure.

We must be either mad or desperate to be payin that kind of money for a defender with no PL experience. £32.5 mimimum.....crazy, so not for me.

We used to have a tight defence a couple of years back with the likes of Hart, Zabba, Kompany, Lezza and Clichy. We could survive with an insipid and ineffective attack on occasions as we wouldn't generally lose the game.

With our now poor defence, that's a major cause of our problems. I still believe that to win the title our defence has to improve and, if it had over the summer, we'd be clear at the top right now.

I think the defence will be fine, only needs one or two in rather than anything drastic. It is the change in the style of defending and the individuals getting used to it more than a decline in the actual players for me (at least for the most part).

As much as we have four decent strikers, I do think we really miss silva and Nasri when they aren't playing, Navas tends to stay out wide so another attacking mid wouldn't be a bad thing.

I'm not advocating wholesale defensive changes, but I'm sure most people want a top quality CB and LB. I think we should have strengthened in these areas in the summer rather than say Navas who doesn't really get a look in anymore and Fernandinho who doesn't look £30M better than Barry.

He doesn't look 30m better than him, but then he didn't cost that more than him anyway

Fernandinho has been the best out of the four for me so far, i think he will be one of those players that you don't realise how good he is until he doesn't play.

I think he's adapting Melton but we could have carried on with GazBaz (sunk cost) but we spent the best part of £30M on Fernandinho instead. GazBaz has been one of Everton's best performers this season to boot.

We need to decide how many DMs we need, other teams manage fine with just one.

Anyway, here's hoping we get two class defenders who can adapt seamlessly to the premier league!

As i've said, imo it's crazy to be spending 30 odd million quid on an unproven CB....now why do people think we need a LB too?
Clichy has had a couple of iffy games lately, those aside have we all not be happy with him?

Den, for me, he's had more than a few shaky games and with Kolarov as our back up....need I say more?

Thing is Dawg, if we go after, let's say, Luke Shaw (as we won't get Baines)....is Clichy gonna be happy to play 2nd fiddle to him?....probably not. This means he'll more than likely want a move away, thus keeping Kolarov as back-up.

That said, i'd be more inclined to pay a decent amount for him, than i would for Ramos  .

Last month I suggested Ramos as an option for Jan after rumours were he wasn't happy at RM. I have also posted on here that IMO we need another CB......my reasons:

1) Lescott is clearly not in MP's thoughts, so may only ever get the odd game to cover for injury, Cup games etc....and is clearly not happy with this, whether it's right or not. Therefore, with the WC coming up...he's not gong to have any chance to get into the squad on his contribution to the City team now, or in the future. We won't get a huge amount of money for him, but he is on big wages.

2) Ramos - has been one of the best defenders in La Liga for the past 6 years. He can play anywhere across the back 4, is still only 27, got loads of experience at club/international level....so to suggest he's unproven isn't really a case for not wanting him.....Kompany, Vidic, Agger, Vertonghen....to name a few didn't have PL experience.
As for the price tag.....yes, it's a lot of money.....but personally, I'd rather us have spent this kind of money on Ramos than the £30m on Fernandinho....but that's by the by. I'm not having a go at Fernandinho, as he has done OK.....my argument is between who I personally could justify spending that money on. It's only similar to what United spent on Ferdinand all those years ago.

3) LB....I think Clichy has been average this season so far, but maybe because of a combination of injuries and MP's rotation policy is to blame. I still think we should keep him as when he's in form, he a very good defender.
Shaw and Baines will mean selling Clichy, I agree...as he won't want to sit on the bench either......but if Shaw and Baines improved the squad at the expense of another player, then so be it.
Not sure it's a position though that needs changing for Jan though.

blueboy wrote:2) Ramos - has been one of the best defenders in La Liga for the past 6 years. He can play anywhere across the back 4, is still only 27, got loads of experience at club/international level....so to suggest he's unproven isn't really a case for not wanting him.....Kompany, Vidic, Agger, Vertonghen....to name a few didn't have PL experience.
As for the price tag.....yes, it's a lot of money.....but personally, I'd rather us have spent this kind of money on Ramos than the £30m on Fernandinho

Kompany cost £6m
Vidic cost £7m
Agger cost £6m
Vertonghen cost £10m

Hardly gambles, yet £32.5m+ on Ramos imo is.

Hey, it's all about opinions and this is just mine.

I think this season, more than ever, has seen the defence switch off far too much. You'd hope that world class, experienced defenders wouldn't switch off at all.

That's been one of Lezza's downfalls. Another is that he has no idea what to do with the ball. He cannot carry it forwards or make fantastic passes. He is basically a stopper and that's it. Maybe we want more now.

It's a tough call over the left back position. Clichy wouldn't leave in January if we got another LB as number 1. I don't think we'd go for Baines or Shaw (though I hope we do). If we did get a new no.1 LB, Kolarov can go and we use Clichy as back up for the rest of the season.

It's a funny thing that we let Kolo go, yet I think he'd have done a better job than what remained.

Let's not worry too much about spending the money Den. It's not ours and the club has plenty of it. The new CL tv deal is supposed to bring in an extra £10-£15M per season.

We need to be in it to get this money (last season we got £26M from the CL just for participation and tv money). The higher we finish in the league determines how much we get for the tv money. In 2011/12 Utd. got £15M CL money for winning the league and Arsenal got £3.5M CL money for 4th spot.

With all this money sloshing about, I don't think the club will have any qualms about getting in better players and won't worry about those left by the wayside. The club needs to do this to keep going forwards. It needs to do this to get enough money in to satisfy FFP.