Manchester City completed the signing of Steven Jovetic from Fiorentina for a fee of £22m. The striker completed his move on Friday after passing a medical. He was also wanted by Arsenal and Manchester United with shows the pulling power of Manuel Pellegrini’s team. He is their fourth signing of the summer after Fernandinho, Jesus Navas and Alvaro Negredo with the club’s total spending amounting to almost £90m. It will be interesting to see how City line up next season as they now have four top class strikers to please.
Last season in 31 games, he managed 13 goals and 5 assists which isn’t amazing but he is more of a second striker than an out and out striker. His main competition will be Sergio Aguero with Negredo and Edin Dzeko fighting out to lead the line. In 30 matches for City the Argentine only managed 12 goals and 2 assists which is worse than the Montenegrin Messi. The new signing had a pass success rate of 78.2% which is bettered by Aguero who managed a pass success rate of 78.6%. Jovetic managed 3.6 shots per game which shows he isn’t very prolific as he only scored 13 goals with these shots, however Aguero managed to have a shots per game of just under two. This shows how much harder it is to get the chance to shot in the Premier League.
Jovetic is very expressive in his style of play. He enjoys to dribble with the ball and to cut inside often to get his shots away. He is also strong at long shots which contributes to his high shots per game. Furthermore the striker has the ability to split defences open with key passes which shows his creative spark. One weakness to his game is that he struggles with crossing which showed last season as he was only successful with 7/40 crosses.
The 23 year old will continue to grow as a player while playing at the Etihad Stadium and he could become a world class player if managed right by Pellegrini. This signing is the only one that could be considered to be looking at the future, the other three signings are very much established players who can be relied upon heavily right away. This summer has shown City really mean business and are desperate to regain the Premier League title after last year’s disappointing campaign. Their neighbours will be closely watching them as they need to respond with some big money transfer deals of their own if they want to keep their title.
I still don’t think the club has finished its transfer dealings for the summer with a centre back being wanted by the club after Kolo Toure’s exit and Joleon Lescott being linked with a move away. They may only have Matija Nastasic and Vincent Kompany when the season begins so they will definitely turn their attentions there now. One name linked this summer is Real Madrid’s Pepe who would be a great signing to play alongside Kompany. If they are to regain the Premier League title, they can’t go into the season with a weak position as teams will exploit that.
