Barcelona will find a way to register Torres despite financial complications

Pep Guardiola will forever be associated with Barcelona and he may well have done his former employers a huge favour in agreeing to allow Ferran Torres to move to Camp Nou.

Despite seeing first-team opportunities limited during his first season at City, Ferran impressed when tasked with leading the line early on this season, yet decided to call time on his career at the club when he heard of Barcelona’s interest.

It’s not difficult to see why Ferran opted to move back to his native Spain to join up with one of the biggest clubs in the world, though the initial £46.7m fee including £8.3m in potential add-ons left many perplexed given Barca’s dire financial situation.

In the MEN’s latest Facebook Live, City is Ours writer Alex Brotherton was accompanied by Spanish football experts Roman de Arquer and Ruairidh Barlow as the trio discussed a whole host of topics, including the situation surrounding former City striker Ferran.

Roman kicked off by insisting Barca will find a way to register Ferran despite their financial issues, citing their handling of Sergio Aguero’s summer move to Camp Nou as an example of how Barcelona do business.

RdA : “I really don’t think if they couldn’t sign him up and register him to LaLiga they would’ve signed him. It would be an utter stupid situation Barcelona would go through and they wouldn’t want to go through that humiliation.

“I’m pretty sure they know what they’ll do but to register Ferran Torres to LaLiga they have to get rid of players and to get rid of salaries.

“In LaLiga they have a one to four rule where if you want to spend £1m on a new salary you have to get rid of £4m from another salary so following this rule they will have to manage and see how they will solve this puzzle.

“The latest news is [Philippe] Coutinho is very likely to leave to go to Aston Villa with his old teammate Steven Gerrard, so that would make sense and would be someone to trust Coutinho once more and that will be a good chunk of the salary which would be taken away which would make space for Ferran Torres.

“It’s a matter of getting rid of current salaries and making space for new players. If Barcelona are attempting to sign these players it’s because there’s space and capability to do that.

“The thing is, signing the players isn’t the problem in terms of paying because Barcelona can restructure their loans from short-term to long-term – they’re going to reach agreements and they’re going to get money one way or another.

“So, I don’t think that is much of a problem but it’s the salary that LaLiga has really stiff and fixed rules in terms of not wanting any teams abusing these salary caps.

“But I think they’re going to manage because if they don’t it’ll look really poor for the club and I don’t think that will happen.

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“Ferran Torres will play for Barcelona, no doubt. I don’t think they’re going to make that massive mistake of finding Torres suddenly without a club.

“They’ll guarantee to him, as they did with Memphis Depay and Sergio Aguero back in the summer, because they had the same problem.

“They couldn’t register them and they couldn’t sign them yet but they were confident they would play and they did it. If they’ve gone for Ferran Torres it’s because they know they will be capable of signing him up.”

Were you disappointed Ferran left City for Barcelona? Follow our City is Ours team members Anil Kandola and Alex Brotherton as well as Spanish football experts Roman de Arquer and Ruairidh Barlow on Twitter to join in the conversation and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.