Transfer Talk: Yaya Set For Barca Stay

Betting.betfair.com's Gareth Freeman guest-blogs for Barcelista!

Yaya Toure’s agent claimed a week or so ago that Barca didn’t ‘respect’ the Ivory Coast man and he was considering offers from elsewhere. Granted this wouldn’t have been the biggest disaster that could have affected Camp Nou this summer but it certainly wouldn’t have been a welcome departure. Fortunately this all appears to have been agent talk aimed at getting Yaya a better deal and the news has broken that Toure is set to stay.

This is what the holding-midfielder had to say while on duty with the Ivory Coast: “I am very happy with Barcelona and love the city.

“The atmosphere is excellent and the team is wonderful. I want to continue here and could reach a final agreement this week.”

Obviously I don’t need to tell anyone how important Yaya is to the Barca team. Without his physical presence in midfield Xavi and Andres Iniesta would have a much harder job and he frees up a lot of room for the more creative players to demonstrate their flair. I was personally very disappointed to see that Barca had been linked with Liverpool’s Javier Mascherano as a replacement for the powerful African. As good as Mascherano is, and he might well be a better footballer in terms of technique, I think Toure has the better attributes as a player and rarely (if ever) is he out-muscled in the challenge.

For me Toure now has the opportunity to join the ranks of the greatest in the world in his position. He is at a club where he has the chance to secure silverware on a regular basis and under the stewardship of Pep Guardiola I’m confident the blaugrana will continue to deliver results.

Real Madrid may continue to splash out (ludicrous amounts of) their cash on the world’s ‘best’ attacking players but they seem to be ignoring their defence (typical Perez).

You have to ask the question though – are Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka better than Theirry Henry and Leo Messi? For me it seems a safe football bet that they’re not. Madrid can buy all the flair attacking players they like but if they don’t shore up the defence they won’t be getting anywhere near the La Liga title again next season. Fortunately Barca know a good player when they’ve got one and have decided to offer an improved deal to Yaya to keep him at the club, finally putting to bed rumours of a switch to Premier League sides Manchester City and Arsenal.