James Trafford does not deserve any criticism from Man City fans

Manchester City goalkeeper James Trafford has been criticised by some supporters for not lying about his situation at the club.

As part of the expansion of the upper tier of the North Stand, 500 Manchester City fans who sit on the bottom tier behind the goal were told a few months ago that their seats were becoming part of a new hospitality area. They could stay where they are and pay a few extra thousand a year for the privilege, or they could move somewhere else in the stadium and only pay what they would have done for the next two seasons.

It's not that the club lied to anyone about their North Stand plans, but neither were they fully transparent and none of those 500 fans could have expected that changes in the upper tier would impact them. They have also been offered another seat in the stadium and a price freeze of two years, so even though it is not what they wanted, those supporters have still been given the chance to carry on supporting the club.

It isn't a direct comparison, but it is interesting to see the difference in sympathy that so many fans have for those affected in the North Stand and for James Trafford. City's No.2 goalkeeper has the luxury of life-changing wages to fall back on, yet he too has been squeezed out after not being told the full story and is getting slammed by plenty of City fans online simply for admitting it.

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Trafford made what he thought was the best choice with the information available to him, but he didn't have all the information that City had. And while the club may not have known they would definitely sign Gigi Donnarumma, unless the Italian is lying then we know that they had made clear to him their interest in him before the summer and then talks stepped up after the Club World Cup so it is not like the 26-year-old was some late opportunity that popped up in the last week of the transfer window.

If you took a promotion to join a new company and then inside a month were effectively told you couldn't do that job any more because the company had managed to bring in someone else that they had been speaking to without disclosing that, you would be entitled to be sad, angry, disappointed and upset about it. You didn't have to join in the first place, and the company didn't have to tell you everything else they were planning that could affect you, but the upshot is still that you're stuck in something you didn't think you were signing up for.

Just because he is very well-paid for what he does, Trafford is the same as anyone in wanting to do the job that he is best at. When he joined City he spoke optimistically about using a position as City's No.1 to push to be the starting goalkeeper for his country; with the way it has gone, he may not even make the plane for the World Cup this summer.

It's true that he wasn't promised the No.1 spot when he joined City, but displacing Ederson and displacing Donnarumma are like chalk and cheese. One is a natural progression and the other is a battle that you are almost certainly never going to win.

Trafford has had six months since Donnarumma joined to seek out journalists and moan. He has been in pretty much every squad and so has passed through the mixed zone after matches where at least one reporter will have been waiting.

But he hasn't spoken, just like there are no reports of him dropping his standards in training or throwing in the towel during the games he has played. If he doesn't play as well as he did at Newcastle in the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final, there is a good chance City would have been trailing heading into the second leg and who knows how that would have gone.

Trafford spoke to the BBC after the Salford game having been asked to do so by the club on the back of his performance. He then spoke to a journalist who asked him on his way through the mixed zone, where he spoke honestly about his situation without offering up any criticism of the club or 'lovely fella' Donnarumma.

Maybe there are some misconceptions around the way City went about signing the two goalkeepers in the summer or the nature of his brief interviews at the weekend, but given what should now be apparent, the criticism for Trafford feels harsh and uncalled for. However much or however little sympathy there is for him over City's actions in the transfer window, Trafford has never stopped being professional.

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