Pepe is a player who has been repeatedly linked with City in recent years, with City’s shaky defence (which seems to be getting shakier by the season) the subject of a fair amount of worry. Pepe has been one of the players touted as the man to fix this, right back to when Roberto Mancini was still at the club.
Marca recently reported that Real Madrid, the club where Pepe plies his trade, are set to step up their chase of Aymeric Laporte from Athletic Bilbao, before partnering him with Raphael Varane in a central defence partnership that they will hope lasts them some years.
However, this does have ramifications for the other Real defenders, and Marca are reporting Pepe is likely to be the first to go, with his contract set to expire in 2016. City are thought to be one of the clubs in for him, but they would have a lot of competition to sign him.
In the past, it has been reported City have been ready to pay upwards of £25 million to sign the Portuguese international from Real, but now that he’s 31 and entering the final year of his contract, that fee is likely to be much lower. It has to be wondered however, whether this move will actually improve the defence in the long-term, or whether Pepe is coming to the end of his prime and signing him wouldn’t be worth it.
The defender has played 269 games for Real since signing from Porto in 2007 for a fee of around £22.5 million.
