Manchester City considered selling Savinho to Tottenham last summer and a similar deal is now a possibility in this transfer window.
Savinho has had two seasons at Manchester City
Savinho has had two seasons at Manchester City
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Manchester City, like all clubs, get things wrong in the transfer market. Nobody likes to admit it but these people who are paid astronomical sums because they can get things right in football more than everyone else in their profession still make mistakes.
Something else that goes on in conversations around recruitment is disagreement. Despite managers, sporting directors, CEOs, scouts and everybody else all working for the same team, that doesn't mean they know what is best for the club - and even at the end it isn't always straightforward to see who was right.
To give two examples at City, Pep Guardiola desperately wanted a centre-back to replace Vincent Kompany in 2019 but Txiki Begiristain refused to pay the £80m Leicester wanted for Harry Maguire. Aymeric Laporte suffered a serious injury in the last week of the window and a weak City surrendered the Premier League title, but then signed Ruben Dias the following year and won four leagues in a row.
Fast-forward all the way to 2024 and Guardiola disagreed with the views put to him that the City squad needed ripping apart and rebuilding after those four league successes. He was closest to the players and believed that they could go again, only to realise too late in the season that he had misjudged the situation.
It is still hard to say anybody was entirely right or wrong in these circumstances because football is a complicated sport and business, yet what was important was that in each instance City realised they needed to address their failing. Dias probably turned out to be a better signing than Maguire could ever have been even if it took an extra year, while two trophies in the most recent season speaks to the success of the last three transfer windows overhauling the squad.
Savinho looks to be another case study. There was not full agreement on what to do last summer when Tottenham showed strong interest and the player was open to moving, leading to a situation where the club held discussions and then shut them down.
A year on, Tottenham are looking again and City are yet to close any doors to their player. It has been another frustrating year for the Brazilian winger, who has wowed in the odd game but not shown the consistency to regularly hold down a place in the side.
That isn't to say that he should have been sold last summer or that he definitely has to be this time, but selling Savinho at the second time of asking would be a decisive shift from one side of the argument to the other. City don't get everything right first time, but they would like to think that it is never too costly in the long-term.