jones Saka is always going to play big minutes as long as he's available. Top players at title contenders always do unless they get injured. Just look at Rodri's minutes over the last few seasons (20/21: 2,748; 21/22: 2,884; 22/23: 2,911; 23/24: 2,931) and compare to Saka's (21/22: 2,978; 22/23: 3,181; 23/24: 2,919). If you look at Salah's minutes, they are in the same ballpark too with a couple of seasons (18/19: 3,250; 20/21: 3,078; 22/23: 3,290) that are even higher. In that last season, he literally only had 130 minutes in regulation during the league where he wasn't on the field out of a possible 3,420!
Clearly Saka is playing a lot but my point is that the best players on title contenders usually are over 2,700 minutes unless they have an injury. That only leaves 720 minutes for a Saka backup, which is not going to be appealing to an established top winger. The appeal of Williams was that he can play on both wings so he could split minutes as Martinelli competition as the starter and then Saka backup minutes but that's the level of player we need to be looking at and there aren't many others at his level or better that aren't 100m plus players (Leao, Kvara, Rodrigo, etc).
I do agree with you on the CM need but it feels like Merino is very close. I would have preferred Guimaraes but clearly that's a much bigger expenditure and Newcastle wasn't going to let him go for a fee we felt was fair. I still think that deal might have some legs at the end of the window though. I also think that Arteta and Pep are wired very similarly in that they are not opposed to completely leaning in and strengthening a strength. Pep bought defenders year over year in the mid-2010's and built the base which City still operates from. I feel like we are doing the same.
