Manchester City: Transfer News and Rumour Roundup 4

The Bargain

Nolito, Celta Vigo, 29, Winger

Here’s a relatively new one, Celta Vigo’s attacking winger and surprise Spanish International Nolito is a serious Manchester City target. Starting as early as the middle of last week, Spanish publications, including MARCA, started linking Pep’s side to the 29 year old and it has been widely reported that City lead the race to nab him in local and international media.

Other interest, as detailed by the Manchester Evening News, includes Barcelona, but all signs point to City being the front runner. Where’s the draw here?

From City’s point of view, Nolito presents a low-cost performer who has a floor of squad depth and a ceiling of every day, danger-man with a solid track record in front of goal. This year alone he scored 12 and assisted 7 in 27 La Liga games, including banging them in against both Barcelona and Real Madrid. As for Spain, he’s scored 5 times in 7 appearances for them this year, including in their last game against Turkey. He’s basically Jesus Navas but with all the finishing to go with the creativity and he’s a steal at his buy-out of only 14.1 million.

For Nolito, City would mean a reunion with his old coach Pep, from when he played with Barcelona B, and a pretty good chance he’d be seeing first team football on a regular basis. Again, like with Schalke and Bayern, Celta Vigo get to offload their best player without worrying about seeing him play against them next season. This one, according to most rumors, seems heavily tilted towards City.

Some people, it must be said, aren’t pleased City are targeting Nolito, despite his exceedingly positive stats and performances. Why? Well I’m not so sure. Something about his age, or that he isn’t Paul Pogba, or something. Let’s get real here, he’s a clear upgrade on Navas and, if we got Sane and stuck him on the left, he’s infinitely better than current Sterling too. Further, if this is a player Pep wants, and goodness knows we aren’t sure why he wants what he wants, then we have to have confidence in it.

We can assume Nolito, being coached by Pep, knows his game, his style and what he’s looking for. This alone can be advantageous when trying to transform an entire team, their ethos and play-style into something far from the disjointed form we showed under Pellegrini. Either which way, Nolito is plenty cheap and could play well in the Premier League. He’s worth a punt and doesn’t in any way detract from our chances of another big pull or two this Summer.

Next: The Top Priority