Although the transfer window is now firmly shut until January it would appear the the revolving door is still in operation at the City of Manchester Stadium.
Stories abound today of dressing room bust-ups and disgruntled goalkeepers being told they can move on.
Emmanuel Adebayor it is said had a bust-up with Mancini over the status of his injury. Mancini has played this down. Whilst there are players in the game who either feign injury or believe that they have injuries that are not there, I’m sure that this does not apply to Adebayor who looks to be at some sort of crossroads in his career at this point in time.
Adebayor has been kept on the roster and been told that he is wanted at City, so he must be itching to play, to get his name on the scoresheet and announce his presence once again to the football world. There would be no point in him sitting around pretending he is unfit and collecting his money. I have been critical sometimes of his application but I think the scribes are being a little mischievous here.
If he does want to try the exit route he will struggle to match his contract anywhere in football right now with the game more or less in recession, so the only way to extol his worth is to prove it on the field.
Shay Given on the other hand appears to have been told that he can move on in January with various clubs seemingly looking for him on loan. If ever a player got an injury at the wrong time it was Given. For the entirety of last season he was unopposed number one with his main rival tucked away in Birmingham. That rival improved his game and Given stood still, and not only on his goal line!
We have started to see that complacency does not fit at Eastlands any more, with practically nobody guaranteed a place in the team and I think that this was Given’s downfall. As things move on at a rapid pace at City, so must the players.
Given will want first team football and whereas in the past it has been proven to some extent that experienced keepers are the way forward (David Seaman excluded) we have seen that the younger variety can become the best. Even Iker Casillas is starting to murmur about Joe Hart now and didn’t he get into Real Madrid’s first team below the age of 20? Maybe Iker thinks he’s getting on a bit now.
Whereas ideally Mancini would want to retain a keeper of Given’s magnitude, it is accepted that he will be unhappy on the bench and to get the best out of Hart, Joe has to be played. So it looks like Shay might look to move on in January.
I’m not happy with the back-up goalkeeper situation. I don’t rate Taylor and the other keepers, notably Gonzales look just a bit too young despite being excellent prospects for the future.
So is Given’s situation proven or just more speculation to keep the revolving door busy?
The next few weeks will tell us an awful lot!
Share this article
