Dwight Yorke claims that Manchester City won’t return to “dominating the Premier League” in the future.
Speaking to casinobeats.com, Yorke said that Pep Guardiola’s side will have to suffer through a period of transition, and he doesn’t think it will be as easy for them to return to the top of the table as some suggest:
“They will go through that sort of phase that Liverpool had, that Man United are currently going through. They will still be very competitive, but they’ll be losing a lot of their players and then you’re asking players to come in and fit into that system, to start winning again. It’s a complete rebuild required.”
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“This group of players have been a unit for five-to-six years. Now they’re starting to disperse one by one, or two by two. I’m sure there will be more moving on at the end of the season and there will be fresh faces joining the club. To get them playing to the kind of standard that they can play, that’s going to be challenging. I don’t think that is as easy as some people think it is. It’s much more difficult when you go through a transition as a team.”
“I don’t think City will be the dominant force in the Premier League for a while now. They have been dominating the Premier League for so long. I think the time has come where they’re going to find that transition very challenging and, in many ways, it starts now. He’s seen it coming and has tried to act on it with recruitment, but it hasn’t really changed anything. It won’t be the same at City for a long, long time.”
City are set for a summer of change
As Yorke mentions, a number of key players are likely to leave the Etihad at the end of the season. Some reports suggest that up to eight members of the first-team could be let go.
Kevin De Bruyne, Jack Grealish. Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, Mateo Kovacic, John Stones, Ederson and Kyle Walker have all been linked with departures in recent weeks. It would be a huge challenge to replace that many in one transfer window.
The club will hope to follow Liverpool’s example
Many pundits dismissed the chances of the Reds competing for the title this season after Jurgen Klopp’s exit but the Merseysiders are currently 13 points clear at the top.
Of course, they did have a volatile couple of years prior to this campaign as they added new blood to their squad. They finished 5th in 2023 and 3rd in 2024.
Even so, the transition has been relatively painless, and City will be hoping to follow suit over the coming months.
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