In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Kevin De Bruyne’s Saudi Arabian u-turn is a real fillip for Man City, why Liverpool fans need to be careful what they wish for, why Kylian Mbappe needs to be humble, why Mikel Arteta could still be at Arsenal even if they don’t win the EPL title for 10 years and which team has had the best transfer window so far.
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I think that the Saudi Pro League would look at anybody that would push any progressive football club forward, hence their interest in Kevin De Bruyne.
It also goes to show that, along with Ederson, this Man City squad is starting to age a little bit, because I think that Mbappe is probably the only player where the Saudi clubs have come in to try to tempt someone at their peak.
Even below his peak, Kevin De Bruyne is that sort of totemic experienced figure who’s quietly assured and who, without a doubt, you’d want in your dressing room.
So it’s a compliment in one way to the player, even before you take into account the generational wealth that he’d be likely to earn in Saudi Arabia.
De Bruyne has had his injury problems but I think he’ll definitely provide more competition at Man City this year as they aim for another title.
It’d be very interesting to see whether Pep Guardiola does leave at the end of the season, or whether he signs a new contract and stays for another cycle too.
Regardless, with Kevin De Bruyne in the team, it’s a massive fillip for Manchester City as a football club to keep their best player.
Liverpool fans are unhappy at the club’s lack of transfer business this summer, but what seems to happen with progressive coaches, and I saw it with Unai Emery when he came to Aston Villa, is that they’ll have a really good look at the academy and at who’s loaned out first.
I think that the fundamentals with Liverpool at this point are fairly similar to Villa in terms of Arne Slot wanting to assess what he’s got, and that’s not just in the first team squad.
Liverpool, historically, have been good at producing players and Slot will want to have a look at them all together before going to the technical board and saying ‘I need a right back, I need a central midfielder, I need a wide left player,’ – and I think that’s the best way to do it.
Liverpool fans ranting and raving on X don’t quite understand that the new manager almost has to have an inventory or a stock take first to see who’s good enough and who’s not good enough.
What the club don’t wan’t and what football should never be about, but what football fans have indulged over the last 10 years is the ridiculous yellow tie, yellow dress wearing Sky Sports News Deadline Day brigade, where fans are just hoping that the club gets anybody through the door.
Especially now with FFP, clubs need to be more creative.
What do Liverpool fans really want? Their club blowing £50m/£60m on a player that will end up being surplus to requirements, or blowing £5m a year on a recruitment guy that keeps them with a pipeline of the world’s best talent over the next five or six years.
For me, it’s a no brainer. The latter scenario means the football club is sustainable, works better and their recruitment looks much more solid.
Mikel Arteta could stay at Arsenal for 10 years and still not win the Premier League, and it’s unlikely to make a huge difference to the board.
I think that he’s almost hanging on by his fingernails at the moment waiting for Pep to go, and I know that a lot of Arsenal fans reading that would go ‘well, we’ve run them (Man City) very close in the last couple of seasons.’
Once Pep Guardiola goes, then yes, there’ll be a few teams below them that are going to be in better shape to be able to take advantage, but let’s not forget the fact that Arsenal have only run them very close in seasons where Manchester United seem continually in flux, where Liverpool could have and should have done better, and where Tottenham were in transition with the new manager, Ange Postecoglou.
So from that perspective, Arsenal have had very fertile ground to try and be successful, and they still haven’t done it when it comes to Premier League.
The Arsenal board like Arteta’s work, his style of play and the players that have been brought in, and the first-team have been relatively successful.
I almost see it as a sort of Gareth Southgate scenario but in club football.
It sounds odd, but I genuinely believe that from where they were when Arteta came in – wasting money on players like Nicolas Pepe, other players not really wanting to go there, falling away in the title race and not challenging for a number of years – to where they are now, that should be considered a success in itself.
At least now Arsenal can offer regular Champions League football again and it’s a place whereby on and off the pitch, there seems to be some sort of unity and enjoyment of the work process.
Kylian Mbappe, particularly because of the of the clout and the unrivalled power he had at PSG, will automatically go in at Real Madrid as a senior player, but he’ll definitely have to be humble because there are enough senior players in that dressing room and a stadium full of people that are used to seeing Galacticos arrive.
They won’t really care that he was a Real Madrid fan as a kid or that he had Cristiano Ronaldo posters on his wall.
Players like Dani Carvajal have been there, seen it, got the t shirt and so there’ll be two or three that will be looking at him and seeing how he is in the dressing room.
As I was told when I joined Liverpool, ‘play the political game,’ because obviously, if he doesn’t, he’ll find things very different to Paris Saint-Germain on and off the pitch.
When I went to Liverpool, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that within two or three weeks of signing and after all the happy, clapping, ‘hey, how you doing, do you want to come out with us for a beer and be our friend?’ kind of thing, that my team-mates thought I was some big time Charlie.
I did an article for FourFourTwo in which I basically made a criticism of an industry that buys a player from a club (me), already knows what he does over a number of times that they watch him and then completely tries to change his natural game.
It wasn’t meant to be ‘here I am, a British record signing, the best thing since sliced bread,’ it was that Liverpool’s way of working just made no sense to me.
Liverpool knew how I played; get the ball into feet early, I could turn people. I could run at people, and if there’s space in behind, I could run behind.
The late, great, Ronnie Moran said ‘look, Steven McManaman is the one that runs with the ball, Robbie Fowler is the man and Ian Rush is the fox in the box,’ so I had to completely reinvent my own game.
I made a point in the article of saying ‘what other industry buys an asset only to completely change it?,’ and after that, there was kind of like a genuine, I wouldn’t say hostility, but a snideness from some players that wasn’t there before.
So, Kylian Mbappe, who has been top dog and massively over indulged for so long, will have to fall in line fairly quickly, be humble and say the right things.
If he doesn’t, there’ll only be problems down the road.
I’m going to go with my club Aston Villa for being the most impressive so far in this current transfer window.
Firstly, they’ve had the stumbling block of wanting to spend lots of money but can’t because of FFP, so they’ve had to get creative.
Morgan Rogers was originally at West Brom, who have arguably the best academy in the country, but Villa had him watched and brought him in prior to this summer – a deal which indicated that the club were getting it exactly right in terms of recruitment.
Jaden Philogene coming back again is a really good bit of business for £12m too. They sent him out and he was battle tested in the Championship, and he’s done the business. We all know what he was like at Hull, and now he’s got an opportunity to shine.
I remember writing about Amadou Onana several years ago and thinking this guy could be a real tour de force as a midfielder. Some Villa fans have said, ‘well, it’s not exactly an upgrade on on Douglas Luiz,’ but he’s a very different player, who is physically stronger.
When John McGinn was having quiet games last season, they didn’t have that physicality between Luiz and Kamara.
So, Onana’s ability to drive forward and to be a physically big presence as well as being able to pass the ball will be manna from heaven for Unai Emery.
There might still be some more deals to be done as there’s talk of Joao Felix heading to Villa Park, and that would really would set the cat amongst the pigeons.
Yes, they’ve spent the most money this summer, but they’ll recoup a lot too, don’t forget. They’ve got Moussa Diaby off the wage bill, Douglas Luiz is gone and Jhon Duran is likely to move to West Ham…
They’ve added where they’ve needed to and sold well so, for me, the club that has done the best business in the Premier League so far just happens to be the club that I support.
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