On Bony and Monk

Well, it's been a tumultuous last few days for me personally. It's nice to be able to settle down to write this and forget about everything for a couple of hours.

I think Wilfried Bony is a bargain at £28 million (including performance related bonuses) for Man City. First and foremost he's a proven goal scorer in the Premier League (he was the top scorer in the 2014 calendar year with 20) which is crucial. Plenty of strikers have come in on big money from other leagues (e.g. Soldado, van Wolfswinkle,) and found it very difficult. City can be very confident that Bony will settle in quickly and start scoring goals. That's invaluable and they should have to pay a premium for that. Secondly, he's the perfect age, 26. He's old enough to have already proved himself but he still has his peak years ahead of him. Thirdly, he's not cup-tied for the Champions League like most other top strikers are. Fourthly, strikers with similar Premier League goal scoring records have gone for significantly more money at the same stage in their careers, Suarez was £65 million, Bale was £80 million, Torres was £50 million a few years ago. Now obviously Bony doesn't have the flair and entertainment value of those players, and I'm not comparing him directly to them, but I am saying that I would have thought that he would be worth a bit closer to those sorts of figures.

He will be a big loss to Swansea City of course. But Gary Monk is a great young British manager and they'll be fine. The only problem I have with Monk is his complaining about referees all the time.

I understand why managers complain about referees. It's a tactic in order to get more decisions in your favour further down the line. If the referee knows that he'll have hell to pay if he makes decisions against a certain team then he less likely to actually do so. This isn't dishonesty on the referee's part, it's human psychology - the pleasure/pain principle. Subconsciously, referees know they will get more negative media coverage if they give a 50/50 decision against a Chelsea or a Manchester United than against a Swansea or a Burnley.

Monk is just trying to stick up for his team....but he's driving me nuts!