Generally transfer rumours relating to Manchester City are about inbound players, stories of people leaving the club are generally few and far between…unless its a manager.
Today is slightly different as our friends at talksport are reporting that Ivorian giant Yaya Toure is being linked with a move back to La Liga, not sure I think there’s much in this one but lets have a look at it.
Toure moved from Barcelona to City in the last transfer window and he cost them a cool £22million, he has gone onto to take to Premier League football reasonably well. He seems to divide opinion amongst City fans, he has played a more advanced role than he did at his former club and at times that has paid off as he has scored a few goals scoring 5, as well as creating 6 for his team mates.
Others however have questioned his work rate and have noted his tendency to go missing on occasions. I sometimes wonder how much of that is down to the difference in style of play, at Barcelona his role was a lot more simple, he was just expected to sit in front of the defense and give the ball to Xavi or Iniesta and let them go and play, at City he is expected to get around the pitch a lot more, and sometimes his fitness levels have suffered.
Early on in his career at Eastlands Toure seemed to be finding it hard to settle, there were a few on the field bust ups with his team mates, and the famous incident of him leaving a game at half time, however lately things have began to settle down, and no matter how each City fan feels about his performances I think generally they would prefer he was at the club rather than not.
Talksport reckon that it is the arch-rivals of his former club, Real Madrid, that want to tame him back to Spain, they suggest that they wanted to move for the player last Summer, but decided to not compete with City. However, after a season in England he has really impressed Jose Mourinho, and he believes he is the man to partner Xabi Alonso in their midfield, the website reckon the club are ready to offer £20million for his services.
I am not sure how much truth is in this story on a few levels, firstly, Madrid are hardly short of bodies in that area of the field as well as Alonso, they also have Khedira and Lassana Diarra so unless they were planning on selling one or both of those I don’t see where Toure would fit in.
Secondly, I just don’t see Manchester City being willing to sell the player at this point, whilst he may have divided opinion, Roberto Mancini would rather have him than not I am sure.
Whether this one has any legs we will wait and see, but personally I don’t buy into it at the moment. It seems the City Summer rumour mill is really starting to ramp up though!
For more of my thoughts on the latest transfer rumours, @soccercityjoe on twitter is the place!
