Man City fans have a new hero after Liverpool and Arsenal transfer drama
Manchester City had a mixed transfer window where early disappointment has given away for overwhelmingly positive reviews
It is wild to think that it's less than three weeks since all the drama around Florian Wirtz unfolded. Manchester City fans were unhappy to hear their club had pulled out of a move for the Leverkusen star, and incandescent when Liverpool emerged as his favoured destination.
Losing out on a German international to the German champions was one thing, but to the team that have just beaten you to the Premier League title is harder to swallow. Having dared to imagine Wirtz tearing up the division in blue as Kevin De Bruyne's successor, it was painful to put the genie back in the bottle and pack it off to Anfield.
What has followed has been remarkable. Khaldoon Al Mubarak vowed on the eve of June that the club planned to do the bulk of their transfer business before the Club World Cup, and days before they set off for the United States they have signed four new players for less than the transfer fee they would have had to pay for Wirtz.
Not just any players either, but exciting talent with room to grow that have a fanbase excited again. With a specialist left-back in Rayan Ait Nouri, a classy goalscoring midfielder in Tijjani Reijnders and a chance-creating maverick in Rayan Cherki (as well as a new third choice goalkeeper in Marcus Bettinelli), the squad - and the mood - feels significantly different for the better.
The man who is getting the bulk of the praise from supporters is Hugo Viana, the new sporting director who was tasked with giving some hard truths to the board about the squad and then finding solutions. He is still working alongside the long-serving but outgoing Txiki Begiristain, who has just wrapped up his final transfer window after 12 years of huge success himself.
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But the feeling that this is now the Viana era has been amplified by the club's official announcements, with just the new man pictured and quoted in the official releases welcoming the new signings. In the frenzied world of transfers, despair over Wirtz has quickly transformed into glee - not least because Liverpool still do not have their man.
The winter springs to mind, where a gloomy December on the pitch was made worse when it became clear that City were not going to sign Martin Zubimendi or Bruno Guimaraes to rescue their season.
Four signings followed, and Zubimendi is another who looked set to join a Premier League rival but now has Arsenal fans sweating that he may be off to Real Madrid instead.
It is too early to judge how good a window or summer it has been for City, and there is plenty of work still to do to get the squad as Guardiola wants it. It can already be said though that the new signings have been exactly what supporters wanted to see, and there is a new favourite for them to credit for that.
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