The summer was all about sorting out a left sided player (Bale), and getting in more CB cover (Kaboul) which we succeeded in doing as well as bringing in more youngsters for the future (Boateng, Rose, Taraabt etc).
No one was complaining at the time, and no one could forsee our injuries, lack of form of key players, and general ineptness.
He seemed to be fairly cheap and would have provided an immediate link with Berbatov whilst Bale settled in.
It depends what you want, really, doesn't it?
It's quite interesting comparing Sven's buying policy this summer with ours, because whilst everyone is currently raving on about Petrov and Elano, they're forgetting that Pearce left a very firm foundation behind him. He might have had dreadful judgement when it came to strikers, but building a defence was another matter, and City's was pretty solid last season, which was just as well.
Dunne gets sneered at by some of our resident experts, but he's solid and hugely experienced, and combines superbly with Richards; in front of them you have Hamann, who's been a rock. Without those three, Elano and Petrov would be nowhere near as effective (and you also have the highly impressive Ireland and Thomas). In fact, aside from two very useful full-backs, Elano and Petrov, the City's success has come from a core of players who were already there. On the downside, Bianchi looks like he's going to be another in the embarrassingly long list of crap City strikers and Bojnov, through no fault of his own, looks like he's going to be out for the whole of the season.
The key players, though, are surely Hamann and Dunne, bags of experience at the heart of things, just where you need it, and just where we don't have it. Jol mentioned that we considered both Chivu and Distin, and whilst it's doubtful that Chivu would have picked us ahead of Inter, we must surely have been in with a good shout for Distin if we'd really bothered. And was there really no experienced CM, someone in the mould of Tugay or Hamann, that we could have got in? Just about everyone on SC was unanimous in believing these were the signings we really needed to make, and I simply refuse to believe that both Jol and Comolli failed to realise what was apparent to us lot.
Whilst I think that Levy's policy has been correct as far as the long term goes, as far as the here and now is concerned it's left us long on potential, short on players who will make an immediate difference where it's required.
And there was me thinking it was left winger, left winger, left winger!
Oh, I simply took a LW/LM as understood.
But would you disagree with the rest?