His part in the Ederson succession plan was botched basically before it began<\/a>. Around the time of his decisive mistake in August\u2019s defeat to Spurs \u2013 the second of Trafford\u2019s three-game run of starts from the beginning of the season, since which he was watched the entirety of their Premier League campaign from the bench \u2013 Manchester City\u2019s pursuit of Donnarumma was an open secret.<\/p>\nTrafford would have been justified in feeling aggrieved, undermined and misled. As he said at the weekend, he and his representatives\u00a0\u201ctried to guard against this situation happening\u201d so clearly knew it might.<\/p>\n
But there is no real blame to be attributed to Manchester City, even if they swore to Trafford on any number of numerous executives\u2019 family members\u2019 lives that the gloves would be his this season.<\/p>\n
Donnarumma is the better, far more experienced and proven shot-stopper at an elite level.<\/p>\n
Having declared himself a \u201cworld-class goalkeeper\u201d last year (with some slight prompting from Scott Parker), Trafford might well disagree. Guardiola and Manchester City should want him to, such is the unique, innately competitive dynamic of the sport\u2019s most individualist role.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t feel bad, I understand the situation, the situation of the keeper is completely special, right? Because you play one or the other one. It\u2019s not like some players where you can play in different positions,\u201d the manager said in January, adding that he wants Trafford to stay \u201cfor many, many years, but the situation of the keeper is special and we will see what happens\u201d.<\/p>\n
As long as it plays out courteously, the environment can be healthy and mutually beneficial. Donnarumma is proving his brilliance in the Premier and Champions Leagues while Trafford prepares for one cup final next month and potentially another come May.<\/p>\n
He wants to play more and vocalised that desire when asked, while recognising the why and how of his current circumstances and what he can do to change them. That he has faced some criticism online for doing so is predictable and bizarre in equal measure.<\/p>\n
Trafford has basically suffered for being the first and lesser of two market opportunities Manchester City could not pass up in one position this season. The Etihad club would have been foolish not to trigger the buy-back clause and matching rights which came into play when Newcastle bid for Trafford in July, and naive to examine too closely the dental health of the gift horse that was \u00a326m Donnarumma arriving at their door soon after.<\/p>\n
Some might say Trafford was unwise to reject Newcastle and is good enough to start for most Premier League sides other than the one he backed himself to break into last summer, so deserves no sympathy. But the terms and conditions he agreed to were changed a month into his contract and that is bound to foster some bitterness.<\/p>\n
There is a clear hierarchy in place for now but it feels unnecessary for fans to go to bat for or take against either keeper as soon as some mild frustration is aired. Donnarumma\u2019s own agent has literally openly discussed his desire to return to Serie A<\/a>\u00a0if the avenue ever opens up so Trafford can hardly be condemned for considering and speaking about his own future.<\/p>\nHe should be \u2018raging\u2019, and \u2018hurt\u2019 about his situation, as has been reported. But Manchester City have done little wrong either. As Trafford said:\u00a0\u201cIt is what it is. It\u2019s football.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIn a World Cup year, Pep will have given him the full sales pitch saying, \u2018you are coming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3708,10287,914,15143,1100,61,60,142967,8579,43,3106,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-302397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-f365-features","9":"tag-f365-says","10":"tag-front-page","11":"tag-gianluigi-donnarumma","12":"tag-home-page","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-james-trafford","16":"tag-manchester-city","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-popular","19":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}