Manchester City: An Ultimatum From Yaya

Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure has been the subject of speculation about his future with the club for a while. Now it seems he wants to put it to bed.

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It’s with a certain trepidation that I approach writing an article connected with Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure. He is the single largest literary minefield with precious wiggle room that I can conceive of on the team. His fans love him, his detractors couldn’t care less, he’s marmite in a blue shirt and is equally infuriating as he is brilliant.

Want an example? Take his contract with Manchester City. We talk about this on a bi-annual, and often more frequently, basis and it’s always the same old thing. He’s basically done, we got the best years out of him and he should go, he’s slow, he looks like doesn’t care anymore, he’s not worth £250,000 a week, he hasn’t been good since his runner-up-for-player-of-the-year 2013 when he had 24 goals. You and I have heard it all.

Yet for all that, Yaya Toure remains, in many ways, the most influential player in a sky blue shirt. The whole teams seems to go flat without him, lacking both presence and drive. He doesn’t score much these days, having 9 for the season so far, but almost every time he does it’s a game changer. Similarly, his 7 assists in all competitions may not stand out in any real way, but he almost always seems to be involved in City’s offensive opportunities and he doesn’t look any less a threat for it.

Honestly, there’s so much more about Yaya but it’s all been said on many an occasion. He’s eternally unsettled and the subject of perennial speculation as to both his future and how that affects his play in the present. Oh and did I mention he has an Agent, one Dimitry Seluk, who is about as useful as a trap door in a canoe for allaying said fears about his client? So it was that, with the season entering the all important home stretch, Seluk waded into the debate and threw petrol on the fire with some choice words to the Sun newspaper:

"“In the next week we must find a solution about whether Yaya will prolong his contract with City or he will go to another club. He does not want to play against Manchester City with another English club. How can he go to another English team and forget the love City fans have showed him?We rejected a huge offer from a Chinese club, the same that bought Ramires, for much more money than Ramires. He wants to finish at the highest level. The offer from China was more than double what he earns at City. If he liked money more than football he would immediately go to China. But Yaya prefers to stay at City. He likes the fans and the town. His heart is in Manchester where his brother Ibrahim died of cancer in a Manchester hospital.Yaya said if he signs a new contract he will give £1million from his salary every year to the hospital where his brother was treated to help other cancer patients and the doctors and nurses and staff.”"

I don’t even know where to start. Christopher Reeves once said “never give in to ultimatums, conventional wisdom or absolutes”, yet here Yaya’s agent wants us to swallow all three at once, with a bit of emotional blackmail thrown in there for good measure too.

You see, the arrival of Pep Guardiola in the summer to take over at Manchester City is forcing the issue. As many note, Yaya isn’t Guardiola’s kind of player. Pep likes quick, tricky and creative players over the stronger, more physical, defensively and offensively versatile guy in the middle of the park, among whom not many are fit to lace Toure’s boots. So there’s been the usual speculation about the 32 year old’s future at the club coupled with the mindset that, in what promises to be a house cleaning, Pep will probably move him on at the end of the season.

So to pre-empt this, it’s little surprise that Seluk is putting down an ultimatum for City brass to put up a new contract for the Ivorian now rather than later. With Manchester City’s lack of creativity evident to all against relegation-threatened Norwich City last Saturday, a game for which Yaya was unable to play in, it served as a timely reminder that he leaves behind a sizeable hole that won’t be so simple to fill.

The whole China thing is a bit of a stretch though, I’d be more inclined to believe that Yaya turned down a Chinese club because he doesn’t want to play in China, rather than any loyalty to City or even to “football”. If City did offer him a new contract, but at a reduced rate in expectation of a reduced role under Guardiola, similarly I’d be surprised if he took it. Toure could, after all, be a first team midfielder in most other clubs in the country, indeed, Arsenal have already been rumoured. Suffice it to say that his desire to not play for another team in England can also be highly flexibe.

Regardless, sooner or later Manchester City have a decision to make regarding Yaya. His fans adore him and even those who dismay over his seemingly nonchalant form appreciate, to some extent, his contribution. But it’s true he’s aging and it’s hard to deny his price is no longer worth every penny as in 2013. Already City have a younger, hungrier and arguably more capable Kevin De Bruyne in the middle of the park and doubtless Pep will have his eyes on several other options to make a splash in his inaugural season.

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It remains hard to speculate about what’s going to happen to Toure in the end, especially given we’ve had this conversation ad nausea. If he is to finally take his leave of the Etihad however, he can bow out knowing he has secured a place in City history as a legend. If he sticks around yet again, well, we’ll probably be talking about it the very same next year. In which case, I may just skip the article after all.

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