Manchester City have been linked with a move for Tottenham Hotspur left-back Danny Rose. The Sky Blues have been struggling to produce or procure a decent left-back for a long period of time now and have been repeatedly linked with the England international for quite a while now.
The former Leeds United player has seen a drastic resurgence in the last couple of seasons and has leapt onto the radar of a number of clubs in recent times.
Manchester City currently have Aleks Kolarov, Gael Clichy, Pablo Zabaleta and Bacary Sagna as their fullback options and all of them are on the wrong side of 30. Pep Guardiola’s methods demand a lot of his fullbacks. They have expected to cover every inch of the grass on their flanks for starters. The players are expected to be an integral part of attacks and they have to overlap on every given opportunity and provide an attacking option at the top. As his teams defend in numbers, during a counter attack the defenders are expected to immediately track back and hence a high energy supply is imperative.
There are question marks regarding this in each of the four players available to the Catalan. Kolarov and Clichy have been defensively suspect on multiple occasions in this season and the last. And in order to implement the high intensity and high pressing possession based football, it is clear that reinforcements are needed in those positions.
Rose, who has 12 England caps, cost Spurs just £1m when he joined from Leeds in July 2007. Rose started his professional career at Leeds United in 2006, having progressed through the club’s youth ranks, but left for current club Tottenham Hotspur in July 2007, having never played for Leeds
Failing to break into the first team immediately, he was then subjected to a number of subsequent loan spells. He spent time in clubs such as Watford, Peterborough, Bristol City and Sunderland before he signed a new 5-year deal at the club in 2014 which was unsurprisingly met with dissent from the home fans who thought that the Englishman had been given enough chances to prove his worth.
But the hostile reaction soon died down as he enjoyed his best season in Tottenham colours in the following season. And presently is one of the most important members of Mauricio Pochettino’s extremely promising project at the White Hart Lane.
There are doubts whether Daniel Levy would be selling the player and whether Rose would be willing to move now. But is Manchester City do get serious regarding this target, things will certainly get interesting.
