It’s officially Spring. You know this because daffodils are in full bloom; you’ve been ‘losing’ an hour’s sleep since being forced to put your bedside clock forward; and all manner of cleaning implements and fluids have miraculously appeared in prominent places around your homes. Manchester City fans know it because Yaya Touré is agitating to leave the club again.
In what seems like an annual event, the midfielder’s agent Dimitri Seluk is insisting that the Ivorian will leave this summer if he is not offered a new contract at the Etihad before the end of the season. This would mean the 32-year-old, whose current deal expires in June 2017, apparently might not reunite with former boss Pep Guardiola, who will succeed Manuel Pellegrini as City manager this summer.
“From this moment we start to discuss with different clubs about Yaya going there in the summer,” Dimitri Seluk told The Sun, as the midfield powerhouse has reportedly attracted interest from Bayern Munich, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain.
“City don’t do anything concrete. Yaya has given everything for the club and we don’t feel that this situation is the right way to show how much they appreciate him,” the controversial agent added.
Touré made a similar threat last year, while City were losing out to Chelsea for the Premier League having already been knocked out to the UEFA Champions League. He even did it in the previous off-season, after the Sky Blues had secured their second Premier League title, allegedly because nobody at the club wished him a happy birthday.
After a strong start this season, which led most pundits to predict an easy romp to the league title, City have fallen away, having suffered two or three sticky patches where wins have proved elusive. While it is true they have had to cope without key players at various points in the campaign, there has been nothing the strongest squad in British football shouldn’t be able to shrug off with relatively little fuss in what has become the most unpredictable season in recent memory.
Of their habitual challengers for the title, only Arsenal have performed anything like what is expected of them; and what is expected of the north Londoners over the past few seasons is, frankly, an inability to last the course. Manchester United, Liverpool and reigning champions Chelsea have all disappointed as much as Leicester City have surprised.
Yet City find themselves in a three way battle with neighbours United and surprise package West Ham to get into next season’s Champions League qualifying competition. So it’s no wonder Touré, a man accustomed to success, is having another strop. The player remains very effective at what he does, but he is notorious for only doing it when he is in the mood.
This year’s Champions League remains a goal, of course, but could an underperforming representative of a league exposed as being mediocre really be expected to triumph over Spain, Germany and France’s imperious best?
Will the club let Touré walk? Presumably this depends largely on whether Pep Guardiola fancies him. The pair know each other well from when they were together at Barcelona, but it was arguably because Guardiola leant towards Sergio Busquets in Touré’s favourite position that the four-time African Player of the Year left the all-conquering Catalonians for pastures blue.
So maybe the writing on the wall is coming into sharp focus for Touré. Certainly he is not over the hill in the pejorative sense the phrase is usually employed. But he has peaked – some would say a while back – and he is clearly a proud man, as evidenced by his bizarre reaction to missing out on a fifth successive African Footballer of the Year gong last year.
Instead of using blackmail to get a new deal, maybe Mr Seluk should advise his client that becoming another club’s big fish might suit his character better than to again become a bench-warmer for Pep Guardiola. If not, I predict a lot more of the sound of mid-season whingeing will emanate from the Etihad Stadium next season.
