Metz flashes vs nikon?

I have a Nikon D5000 DSLR and I'm looking for a flash unit for it, I was looking at the Nikon SB900 but my friend said to look at Metz flashesd for a better and cheaper alternative, does anyone have any further advice on either of these options?

Metz are a good flash - I wouldn't spend over £300 on a flash - sure it has all the TTL all singing all dancing features, but if you learn tp shoot flash manually, you can get away with a much cheaper manual flash.

As well as Metz, you might want to consider Yongnuo - the YN560 is around £40. You won't have TTL flash metering, but its a good fully manual flash at a fraction of the price of a Nikon speedlight.

I recommend getting some radio triggers to use it off camera - a set of RF602's costs around £18.

I've used a couple of YN560's triggered with RF602's on this strobist swim shoot (using a Nikon D300);

very reliable (no misfires0

Metz do produce some really good quality strobes. They are appealing products, and have plenty of solid German engineering, and in some ways they have tricks that the SB900 doesn't have. However Nikon has announced the SB910 which protects against overheating far better.

I had a Metz MecaBlitz 15 (macro flash) for a short period of time. I discovered it was defective as it did not work properly with the NIkon TTL system in wireless mode.

I'm not sure if this was just the unit I had or not, but I have always thought that if you go with the camera brand flash, you will be assured it will work correctly.

The SB700 is a less expensive alternative to the Nikon SB910, which recently replaced the SB900.