After about six weeks, Manchester City predicted a quiet January in terms of transfers.
They already had their next team reviewed in the summer, they had a goal for the winter window: a midfielder from box to box.
But their continuous poor actions and their terrible scenario in December convinced them to break the plans, move budgets and reinforce their team halfway through the season.
Advertisement
They have continued to make 3 additions so far, however, as the 11 p. m. deadline has been released. (6 p. m. ET) arrives at 11:00 p. m. , they have not signed this midfielder, the only thing that has been a desire to cry for months, if not years.
The city is pushing to nominate Nico Gonzalez from Porto and a deadline for the squad is not governed by any means. The club indeed appreciate the need for this type of player and, perhaps, they may be forced to pay a few million euros more for one after Sunday’s 5-1 Premier League defeat at Arsenal.
Yesterday, individual errors and confidence hit were the biggest points in their downfall, however, the lack of speed and mobility in the city’s midfield on full display for Arsenal’s fourth purpose, as well as for the purpose of visiting club Brugge (and a few other possibilities) on Wednesday in the Champions League and in many other games of many other months.
If the city loses the ball on the edge of the opposition bracket, they’re in trouble. They still dedicate men to playing the game they want to play, but even those who are tasked with appreciating ownership are falling far short of their standards, so the ball is lost more often. If the city rushes, their opponents’ gaps would possibly be too large to close and those looking to fill them don’t have the legs to do so.
This is what happened when Savinho lost the ball and Kevin de Bruyne had to qualify or six meters.
“We are an old team,” City manager Pep Guardiola said post-match on Wednesday, name-checking De Bruyne (who turns 34 in June), Ilkay Gundogan (34) and Mateo Kovacic (31 in May). “That’s why I’m a little bit scared to play this transitional game against Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Brighton… They are miles-away better than us.”
Once the midfielder’s midfielder is violated, the defense is exposed and this leads to their other primaries this season.
Advertisement
On Sunday, Manuel Akanji and John Stones, two players that include another city number, who had to face the danger. They were destroyed through injuries and are very good. The fact is that it is a similar story for the other central defenders of the team, Nathan Ake and Ruben days.
City moved to strengthen this domain of the box last month, but has known the two new faces that arrived: Vitor Reis, who has just been 19, and Abdukodir Khusanov, 20, would be more suitable for the improvement team In the long run instead of now. His injury scenario led Khusanov to be thrown at intensity last Saturday opposite to Chelsea, a scenario that would never have happened in general circumstances.
He is highly rated, as is Reis, and they can be regarded as fine long-term acquisitions, but that hardly helps Guardiola now.
So how is the largest city here? You can see that the effort and the center are still there, but, at the same time, their confidence has obviously been damaged too many times so that they can face otherwise.
“They may be fragile, it happened several times, but they have a duty and they didn’t,” Guardiola said after Sunday’s game, changing the way his looks “dropped” in the final 20 minutes. He agreed with “stones” stating that it is “unacceptable”.
Give The Town Gambling Liverpool, Newcastle and Tottenham in their next 3 in the League and Real Madrid in two legs in the qualifiers of the Champions League, those faults will probably be exposed very soon.
There is no guarantee that any new arrival hits the ground running, particularly at City and particularly in their midfield. They have seen Kalvin Phillips, an established England international, come in and barely play a game. Matheus Nunes is playing far more in his second season under Guardiola than in his first, but he has played either left-winger or right-back rather than the central-midfield position he was recruited for.
City have long known, long before his season-ending knee injury happened in September, that they do not have a replacement for Rodri. They always knew they would have to use two midfielders to sit deep if the Spaniard got out for a significant period, and yet Gundogan’s advancing years on his return from a season with Barcelona have not been much help to Kovacic’s instinct to run forward.
Advertisement
In the scenario they are in now, with De Bruyne in the final months of his contract and in all the probability spending in the summer, Gundogan in a similar pot and the endless consultation issues surrounding Bernardo Silva’s long career in the city cannot be harmed when they are reviewed to strengthen this midfielder. They will have to build a new generation and with players like De Bruyne, Gundogan and Bernardo, as well as legends from the past city Fernandinho, David Silva and Yaya Toure, there is plenty to live for.
Guardiola was asked about the difficulty of signing for Rodri’s position ahead of the Arsenal match and had this to say: “There are players who can do it, but the clubs do not sell. They are so expensive, so we cannot do it. Of course we thought about that because Kova and Gundo are helping us, but they are not proper, proper, just holding midfielders. We know that they are making an incredible effort and I am grateful for that.”
Another issue City have found is that the midfielders they do like have either been expected to not want to play second fiddle to Rodri, such as Aurelien Tchouameni, who they did not attempt to sign for exactly that reason, or have actually expressed that to be the case, as with Declan Rice, who they did try to buy but could not.
And as much as there is a clear need for City to strengthen that position right now — and a strong possibility that they will do so in the coming hours — they could almost be forgiven for not doing any transfer business there during this window if they felt that, long-term, it was not the right thing to do.
Go further
The Briefing: Lewis-Skelly’s moment, Nwaneri’s magic and so many City errors
They may well find the right man in 23-year-old Gonzalez anyway but, even if not, as long as they believe that he can help the team in the future, then that is a commendable approach considering the obvious pressure to act now.
Critics of the city’s technique in the market say they’ve been slow to strengthen the dominance around Rodri in recent years and that he would possibly hang out again now, and as much as the club has accelerated its plans by six months, they’ll make this corporate knowledge, or believe, this is what’s smart for years to come. even if it’s not right away.
Since they originally only had a desire for this window, in the form of a dynamic midfield, and its midfield is looking for it more and weaker since they made a decision to other areas, there is also a great tension to get the right player immediately.
It will be easy.
(Top photo: Porto’s Nico Gonzalez; by Miguel Lemos/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)