İlkay Gündoğan

[Messi983]

Official now...

[tw]738280134122184704[/tw]

 

[Gaudi]

I don't mind not geting him, but apparently City payed 25 mil. E plus add ons. have a feeling we would pay 40 at least.

 

[zanela]

I actually do mind. I hope he plays as li'l as possible for Citeh. Too bad he's not ~30 and doesn't play for Arsenal/ LLiga club.

 

[DennyCrane]

With Gundogan, as it is with Hummels, the low price is because he only has one year left in his contract. Yes BVB should have been a lot tougher and firmer last year when Gundogan wanted to leave but ended up staying.

I was defending them but after reading the joint interview between Watzke and Rummenigge hosted by Bild I think at least part of the problems lies with Watzke and BVB management. Basically Watzke capitulated, saying "Bayern is in its own league, of course they wanted Hummels because he is one of the best CBs and there is very little we can do about it", something to that effect. I was shaking my head when I was reading the interview as I thought Watzke lacked aspirations and courage to compete with Bayern head on.

But that said, the underlying issue is that BVB can't compete with Bayern financially. They can't offer the kind of wages that Bayern offers and they don't have the same level of appeals within Germany that Bayern has. Yes you can be a tough guy if you manage BVB but you really have to come to terms with the reality.

Like Atletico Madrid (to a lesser extent nowadays), like Sevilla and many others, they will remain a feeder club to Bayern and other top clubs (including us) for many years to come.

Gündogan's transfer has strings attached, obvious one being that Nürnberg and Bochum receive 16, 5 % of the transfer fee combined. Not so obvious one, the effect this has on other players: Hummels and Ilkay left already which is a bad signal for the rest of the squad. Miki comes to mind as he'll also be a free agent from 2017 onward and so far refused to sign a new contract - and now has all the reason not to. The BVB suits appear suicidal by now.

 

[xavisionary]

On his day is one of the best CMs in the world. Huge signing for City IMO.

 

[Andrew M]

He's good. I think Dortmund players get overrated a lot tbh.

 

[Morten]

Pep is just doing what he has gotten used to by now, robbing Dortmund of players. Even if he is not at Bayern anymore, the Bayern-mentality stuck with him.

 

[Pablo Escobar]

How is signing a player from a team got to do with mentality?

He didn't sign Gotze or Lewandowski, Bayern did. Just like when Bayern decided not to keep Kross because they needed to give him a raise.

City stole players from Arsenal more than Bayern from Dortmund, yet Pep needs to make City beat Arsenal.

 

[Luftstalag14]

Gundogan has wanted out for a while so you can't really blame this one on Guardiola, Morten.

I hope he fails miserably at City like Sahin did at Real Madrid, or Kawaga did at Manchester United, or Goetze did at Bayern.

 

[Pablo Escobar]

Just let everybody fail miserably and rma wins another cl playing Leverkusen, PSV and miserably failed City to the final against Patetico?

 

[El Flaco]

 

[DonAK]

Man City and Pep yet to get this guy going. Would be very interesting to see how he does.

One of my favorite midfielders playing who's currently active.

 

[gasgas]

Nobody will say how good he was against us?

 

[Yannik]

I mean he lost 4-0 and he accidentally contributed to one of the goals, but other than that it seemed like a really good performance team by him. Would've been a hell of a goal that MAtS bailed out there

 

[Alarcón]

He'd be far and away our best midfielder. Sad that no one at the club knows anything about good players anymore.