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| Manchester City required a signing with the wow factor and £49m Raheem Sterling fits the bill. Photograph: Andrew Yates/Reuters |
Rewind to 2007, the age of Sven-Göran Eriksson, Thaksin Shinawatra and a curious and half-baked first attempt at an internationally owned City revamp. The club blew about £40m on a range of players that summer, the most expensive of whom was Bianchi, a 6ft 2in striker who joined from Reggina for £8.8m. He scored on his debut as it happened but optimism soon fizzled out. By January he was so unsettled he was allowed to leave and he returned to Italy to pick up a modest career.
Recalling the tale of Bianchi brings context as City part with £49m to welcome their prime summer target, Raheem Sterling. The fact that their bartering with Liverpool scaled such expensive peaks reflects how remarkably difficult it is for any club – even one with huge financial backing – to recruit what could be defined as A-list talent.
Sterling may turn out to be worth every single one of the many pennies required for Liverpool to release the 20-year-old, and, equally, supposedly surer things than he have turned out to be very costly failed experiments. But it does feel as if part of the package was that City required a signing with wow factor this summer – something to turn heads, create new energy, attract a spotlight.
Considering how City are obviously regarded as major players in the transfer game, having spent about £500m on fees during the years the club has been bankrolled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, they have not bought too many players classified as established A-listers at the time of purchase.
The best examples of players in that bracket – coveted across Europe’s elite, the kind of name which adds stature to a club and is a barometer for excellence and ambition – are Yaya Touré and Carlos Tevez in 2009, and Sergio Agüero in 2011. Robinho, Vincent Kompany, David Silva and Mario Balotelli were all signings who also caught the imagination on a grand scale in the early years of the City renaissance, even if not all of them worked out.
These were players who enabled the City reinvention to gain an injection of high-calibre credibility. But interestingly, none of the signings since Agüero arrived four years ago have had A-list impact.
Last season’s major purchases, Fernando, Eliaquim Mangala and, as of last January, Wilfried Bony have not yet pulled up trees. Two or three seasons ago Stevan Jovetic, Javi García, Matija Nastasic and Jack Rodwell arrived with optimism but found it difficult to blossom at the Etihad. Álvaro Negredo came, had a stunning spell, dipped and went. Jesús Navas is wonderful only in gossamer flashes and has not lived up to the billing that he could become one of the great wingers of his time.
While the financial fair play sanctions City received last summer had an effect, it is still curious that the club’s ability to attract major talent, a touch of galáctico gloss, in the first half of the Sheikh Mansour era has not been matched in the second half.
Buying top-echelon players, even for rich clubs, is just not that easy and one of the reasons for that – not that the game would care to admit it – is that the pool of outstanding talent looks worryingly parched around the edges. Consider how the other most jaw dropping of transfers so far to improve the Premier League’s top four teams are Bastian Schweinsteiger (almost 31 years old) and Petr Cech (33), with the intrigue of what Sterling and Memphis Depay can do offering the hope of youthful dazzle.
One can debate until deadline day whether the heavyweight bucks are appropriate for a player in Sterling’s developmental stage – part of his attraction is the feeling that there could be so much more to come – but there is not much arguing with market forces.
Marquee signings, of course, are not always what they are cracked up to be. When Manchester United spent nearly £60m on Ángel Di María a year ago, they were obviously hoping for more than a fitful season where delightful moments were mixed with underwhelming drifting. Even if it turns out to be a season of adjustment, it was not easy for club or player to confront difficulties when that kind of price tag turns a dark cloud into a thunderstorm.
With transfer figures as volatile as they are, football is full of such awkwardness. Arsenal’s first year with Mesut Özil was tricky. The experience of the former Chelsea striker Fernando Torres seldom shook off that perplexing air. It seems incomprehensible that Tottenham spent £26m on Roberto Soldado. These, remember, all arrived in their mid-20s with a bit of life experience behind them.
For City Sterling may not be the finished article but they are gambling that, if and when he is, he will possess that aura, that sprinkling of stardust, that hovers around the very best.
