{"id":567292,"date":"2020-09-29T16:17:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T20:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=567292"},"modified":"2020-09-29T16:21:38","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T20:21:38","slug":"manchester-city-confirm-ruben-dias-signing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/09\/29\/manchester-city-confirm-ruben-dias-signing\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester City Confirm Ruben Dias Signing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/clubs\/manchester-city\/\" target=\"_self\">Manchester City<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/b21fe2db\/Pep-Guardiola\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pep Guardiola<\/a> have once again invested significant money towards bolstering their defence, a clear weakness in the team. After looking at a host of different centre-back options, they settled on Benfica&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/31c69ef1\/Ruben-Dias\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ruben Dias<\/a>, who joins City for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/54317921\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reported \u00a365 million<\/a>, with <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/0d267745\/Nicolas-Otamendi\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Nicolas Otamendi<\/a> going the other way.<\/p>\n<h2>Manchester City Confirm Ruben Dias Signing<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\uff28\uff25\uff32\uff25 \uff28\uff25 \uff29\uff33\uff01 \ud83d\ude0d<\/p>\n<p>Welcome Ruben Dias to City!<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udd37 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ManCity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#ManCity<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/axa0klD5re\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/axa0klD5re<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/e1PXlBadvR\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/e1PXlBadvR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Manchester City (@ManCity) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ManCity\/status\/1311036817836314624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 29, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Long-Term Laporte Partner<\/h3>\n<p>Besides <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/119b9a8e\/Aymeric-Laporte\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aymeric Laporte<\/a>, City haven&#8217;t had a consistent centre-back for the past few seasons. <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/101da2b5\/Fernandinho\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fernandinho<\/a> impressed in that role, but he&#8217;s a midfielder by trade and will never be anything other than a makeshift centre-half.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/5eecec3d\/John-Stones\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Stones<\/a> and Otamendi have both been uninspiring, which has left Guardiola calling out for reinforcements. This becomes all the more important when you consider Laporte&#8217;s injury struggles. The Frenchman only played 15 games last season, which left City stretched thin at the back.<\/p>\n<p>Dias now joins the Citizens and will give Guardiola another option at the back. Especially if Laporte gets injured again, he&#8217;ll be crucial to maintaining City&#8217;s title hopes.<\/p>\n<h3>One In, One Out at City<\/h3>\n<p>The signing of Dias has seen fellow defender Nicolas Otamendi head the other way after spending five years at the club, winning two Premier League titles, four League Cups and one FA Cup in the process. The defender leaves having collected every souvenir possible in English football. He may not have left a lasting legacy on the pitch at times, particularly towards the end of his time at the Etihad, but Otamendi leaves with a collection of memorable victories.<\/p>\n<p>The arrival of Dias, accompanied by the exit of Otamendi, leaves Pep Guardiola and City with at least four centre-backs to call upon this season with Nathan Ake, John Stones, Aymeric Laporte and now Ruben Dias all available options. It will certainly be interesting to see how Dias fits into what has been the leakiest of defences over the last season or so.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<br \/>\n<a id=\"V2qYmGSpQOVGU0lG04_KKQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1276887366\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'V2qYmGSpQOVGU0lG04_KKQ',sig:'_oY_mlFsBrkCSkvzz4ShLL485L7WCqH8DR6RM4CtdOQ=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1276887366',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manchester City and Pep Guardiola have once again invested significant money towards bolstering their defence, a clear weakness in the team. After looking at a host of different centre-back options, they settled on Benfica&#8217;s Ruben Dias, who joins City for a reported \u00a365 million, with Nicolas Otamendi going the other way. Manchester City Confirm Ruben [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3607,"featured_media":567507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17,30,3,28],"tags":[2990,687,3185,100,1226,972,181,40,3536,136],"class_list":["post-567292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-manchester-city","category-news","category-premier-league","category-transfers","tag-aymeric-laporte","tag-benfica","tag-eric-garcia","tag-manchester-city","tag-nathan-ake","tag-nicolas-otamendi","tag-pep-guardiola","tag-premier-league","tag-ruben-dias","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}