da imperador bet： This article is part of Football FanCast’s Opinion series, which provides analysis, insight and opinion on any issue within the beautiful game, from Paul Pogba’s haircuts to League Two relegation battles…
da bet7k： Samuel Umtiti’s Barcelona career has been a real roller coaster ride and he’s still struggling to find any sort of consistency. As a result, there’s a long way for the defender to go until he can fully regain Ernesto Valverde’s trust.
This season, we’ve seen him take part in a total of six games across all competitions for Barcelona, tallying 457 minutes under his belt in the process.
At this point, however, that’s already a good sign for the Frenchman whose career has been heavily hampered by all sorts of injuries. That is exactly how his fall from grace arrived as he has already suffered two different fitness issues in 2019/20 after two serious ones last season.
Amid claims Manchester City have their eye on Umtiti, courtesy of L’Equipe via Sport Witness, perhaps it would be understandable for Barcelona to cash in. After all, why not make an injury-prone player somebody else’s problem, while adding some cash to the coffers.
But the defender does seem to be turning a corner.
Since the start of November, Umtiti has managed the full 90 minutes in two La Liga clashes and two Champions League bouts, also being on the bench for the last two Spanish top flight fixtures.
He’s remained available and when he has played, he’s been able to keep things solid – Whoscored have given him a performance rating of 7 in La Liga and 6.96 in the Champions League.
Calling all Premier League experts: Who do these unique statistics belong to? Find out below….
So even though Barcelona’s stance on Umtiti’s future was not revealed in the aforementioned report, Valverde should definitely put some trust in the defender and not give up on him just yet, rather than looking to sell.
Releasing him into City’s jaws would mean losing an important and still relevant piece of the Blaugrana squad, while helping Guardiola address perhaps the only real weakness in his squad – a lack of depth at centre-back, which has been really exposed by Aymeric Laporte’s recent injury, resulting in Fernandinho making 17 appearances in defence.
After all, the Citizens could be Barcelona’s potential rivals further down the line in the Champions League. Both teams have advanced through their respective group stages and Guardiola will surely have high aspirations when it comes to the European crown.
That’s the only thing left for him to conquer with the English side, having already established their dominance on the domestic stage in the previous years, so why aid a team Barcelona should be theoretically competing with for continental dominance?
Selling Umtiti would help them do exactly that, when Barcelona could use the former Lyon man to sustain the strength of their own squad instead.
In other news, Spurs fans were delighted with one of their former players visiting the Tottenham Hotspur stadium recently…