Bernardo Silva has spoken out in frustration at Man City's direction as a team
The star delivered a surprise verdict after Man City lost in the FA Cup final
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By JACK GAUGHAN
Published: 12:00 EDT, 18 May 2025 | Updated: 12:00 EDT, 18 May 2025
Bernardo Silva delivered thinly veiled criticism of unnamed Manchester City team-mates by claiming that he knows who has been in the trenches this season and insisting ‘something has to change’.
City face a defining seven days in salvaging something from this campaign by qualifying for the Champions League, with victory over Bournemouth on Tuesday crucial towards finishing in the top five.
Silva offered a damning assessment on the year after City’s 1-0 FA Cup final defeat by Crystal Palace at Wembley and indicated the squad will be hit with a wage reduction if they don’t reach Europe’s premier competition.
‘You learn a lot of new things, in the bad moments you learn new things,’ Silva said. ‘Who you can go to war with, first of all. Because it's in the bad moments that you see who the real ones are.
‘And a lot of things that were good for us – not to take things for granted, for our fans, for the club. Don’t lower our standards.
‘It's a tough season for us. It's a really, really bad season for us. Something has to change next year.
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‘It's for the big bosses to decide. I have my opinion but definitely something needs to change when you don't perform at this level.’
City are making moves to alter the squad ahead of the summer, looking at three midfielders – Florian Wirtz, Morgan Gibbs-White and Tijjani Reijnders – while a right back is high on the agenda.
Pep Guardiola has publicly praised Silva’s fortitude this season and said he ‘will never forget’ that the midfielder has put his body on the line amid alarming dips in form and an injury crisis.
Silva has been keen to secure a move away from Manchester over the past few summers but his forthright comments in recent weeks suggests that the Portuguese is planning to see out the final year of his contract.
‘We have two important games because qualifying for the Champions League or not can make a huge difference for the club financially and for us,’ he added.
‘I know we've got people used to winning every year. And people demand this team to win every year.
‘Football is a tough sport and it's not easy to beat these teams, especially in the Premier League. Like Palace, this team has a lot of individual quality.
‘If you go and look around teams in the Premier League, all of them have two, three players that are unbelievable players. Our standard and our level needs to be very, very high to be champions again. And that's the level that we want to reach again.’