Bianchi Loaned to Lazio (With Possible Deal to Join)

[thecitizen]

This is a sad day. If you haven't seen it, I ran into the story about 30 mins ago, and I have to say I'm a bit surprised. To be totally honest, I think Bianchi has done alright since making the jump to the English league. I don't know if he will join, but I sure hope he doesn't. It was only about a month ago Rolando said he was more than happy at Eastlands and saw a future as a Citizen. And personally, I think he does have one here, he just needs time to really settle in.

Bianchi has scored only four times in 19 appearances, but those appearances have only really been for about a half with him being the only forward in most cases (which is hard for a strong, tall striker who relies on teamwork and a supporting forward to make plays). Any player struggles scoring without full time on the pitch.

Hopefully we don't lose Rolando, because I have really learned to like him.

http://www.mcfc.co.uk/default.sps?pagegid={DBD12D53-8346-431D-A04F-5D0F8664DE80}&newsid=526235

[FlanInTheFace]

I feel the same way, since the first game I have been hoping for him to do good. He hardly got any playing time, and lately he's seemed to be playing pretty good.

[thecitizen]

I thought those 4 goals were good goals too, that really took some skill to put away.

I think Bianchi just needs more time to prove himself, like Nery.

[MVF]

What the hell.

Is Sven planning to play Micheal Ball alongside Richards up front?

Were a couple of injuries away from having NO forwards. This is really worrying.

[CityBlues]

I second the aformentioned thoughts. I think he just needed some time to settle, and he needed decent playing time to do that, something that we were not accomodating him with. it is really a shame to see him go to Lazio, I have a feeling they are going to pick him up at the end of the season. Hopefully, Sven has something up his sleeve and can pull ni some more forwards before the window closes. Of course, we are now being linked with Luis Fabiano along with everyone else in the world...

[Alan D]

I've been wracking my brains around the whole thing for the last 24 hours and Im still struggling to think of why hes been allowed to leave. Fair enough he hasnt settled in over here but I thought he'd stay until the end of the season at least. We've got the same strikeforce as last season available to use right now (with Boj and Castillo out injured). Im as happy with our season as anyone, but if we dont manage to sign a replacement I would be fairly critical how we've gone about our business. It would be virtually impossible for us to make Europe, we might just have enough points now to consolidate ourselves in the top 10. I dont want to put down our current strikers but this is the reality:

Samaras: Not good enough for this league
Vassell: Not a natural finisher, good alongside a goalscorer but ineffective as a lone striker.
Dickov: Have to love him for what hes done for us in his first stint but again not good enough now.
Bojinov: Very high hopes of him, very talented but injured and wont see the best of him until start of next season.
Sturridge: Back from 8 month injury and isnt ready for the Premiership, could be contesting for the first team nearer end of the season but cannot be thrown in at the deep end. A massive talent and next year will be his year.
Evans: Like Sturridge, big hopes for him but inexperienced. Can score goals but cant be relied on, especially now as hes on-loan at Norwich.
Mpenza: Fine striker, just injury prone as he is now.
Castillo: High hopes, first-team player who is a big asset to us but injured and needs time to adapt to pace of the Premiership.

The strikers fit and available for Sundays match are Vassell, Samaras, Sturridge and Dickov. It scares the life out of me - although Bianchi hasnt started many games, at least there was the reassurance he could come off the bench. If Vassell failed to score (more times than not), we had someone who could score coming on off the bench. Now we don't, and if we are relying on one of the current lot to find the winner against Sheff Utd or Derby then Im not too confident.

I can understand why Bianchi was allowed to leave, hes not settled in and it seems it hasnt worked out as well as Sven had hoped it would. But theres still a week of the window left, why couldnt he have stayed for another week so we have him for the Sheff Utd game and match vs Derby. He could get injured that will prevent him from leaving, but he could just have easily been injured in the last game or one before that. I would of expected that the loan deal was dependent on us getting in a replacement, but it doesnt seem so. Its been widely known that we have problems in attack, and Svens admitted it is the priority to strengthen - the last thing I thought would be to sell rather than buy. We should be adding in another striker and selling Samaras, by losing Bianchi theres even greater pressure to sign one. I expected us to KEEP Bianchi and buy another striker, rather than only sell him off and buy another.

This is probably the most negative post Ill do this year, but I have complete trust in Sven and the management team to sign a proven replacement for Bianchi. The worries of last year's embarrassment in the window is still fresh in my mind, we're completely different this time round but im just worried not even signing a replacement. Sven has worked magic this year, but even he will find it hard to make Vassell, Samaras, Dickov etc. into goal machines. The consistent mention of Sven saying how hard it is to sign players in this window does little to make me feel better, but im fairly confident we will have someone else in this time next week.

[ForzaGrifo]

Bianchi wanted to leave very badly and said he'll never play English football again because he had a tough time adjusting to English culture, at least that's what I heard from my local football tv show.

Let him go if he doesn't want to play here. We'll surely find someone else with Sven's extensive network.

[thecitizen]

Our forwards have really been the reason we haven't found ourselves in 3rd or even 2nd place, especially since we are the lowest scoring team in the Premiership (Grinding out wins is really hard when your trying to achieve European qualification).

But overall, I think Sven has plans for Bianchi and I don't think he is going to let him go too easily. Sven has made miracles happen in just 6 months, and you can tell he is trying to build a squad for tommorow and not entirely for today (notice how the average age of our players is about 22, which is unheard of in the Premiership).

We all know Bianchi is struggling to fit into the City line up, but he is a very determined player (and you can really tell, having not left after the first week of January) and I truthfully believe he can really be a big influence in the City future. (Even though next year, we will probably have very little problems with our forwards....can you say Nery and Bojinov domination?)

[soccer krazy]

Bianchi joins Torino
http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12875_4037216,00.html