Manchester City will end the season potless for the first time since Pep Guardiola’s first campaign on these shores and quite the rebuild is required this summer to ensure this is a blip rather than something more significant at the Etihad.
On the back of defeat to Crystal Palace in the FA Cup final and Conference League football hilariously in the offing, we’ve come up with 12 players in need of an upgrade, either because they’re over the hill or haven’t met the mark this term.
Phil Foden
A season on from winning Player of the Year, the £110m-rated playmaker was deemed worthy of just 14 minutes in the FA Cup final on the back of starting three of City’s last 10 Premier League games.
He’s not about to be sold or written off after one bad season, but such an extraordinary fall from grace has led to a situation where links with supposed Kevin De Bruyne replacements could also be viewed as potential Foden upgrades. Florian Wirtz looks suspiciously like a mix of the two.
READ MORE: Phil Foden’s awful POTY defence puts him in Premier League hall of shame with Eden Hazard
Kevin De Bruyne
City haven’t historically had much trouble replacing club legends: Kyle Walker for Pablo Zabaleta; Rodri for Fernandinho; Ruben Dias for Vincent Kompany; Erling Haaland (belatedly) for Sergio Aguero. But this one feels like the most impossible of those impossible tasks.
Matheus Nunes
Amid questions as to whether Nunes has the requisite quality to play for Manchester City after a number of dodgy displays this season, the Portugal international could quite reasonably cry foul on the basis of him playing just 210 of his 2,500 minutes in his favoured central midfield role.
He’s played 15 games at right-back having never played there before, which has been painfully obvious to anyone watching, and has played more games on the left wing (9) than in his other five seasons in senior football combined.
We’re not saying he’s the answer in midfield for Guardiola, who knows better than we do, but how sh*t must he be to have not been given the chance to stake his claim in such desperate times? A terrible waste of £53m.
Ilkay Gundogan
We’re not really sure we’ve ever quite known what Gundogan is as a footballer. In the past that’s been a positive: he couldn’t be pigeonholed, floating through games as a player you wouldn’t necessarily notice if you weren’t focusing on him, but appreciated hugely when you did. Now it’s more a case of not knowing the point of him.
He now does everything at a snail’s pace, the late darts into the box are no more and we can’t remember the last time we saw him do anything other than wander into position, receive the ball and pass it sideways or backwards. While Gundogan’s style of football has always been hypnotic, it’s now reached sleep-inducing levels thanks to the complete lack of threat he offers.
Nathan Ake
We were never wholly convinced anyway. There was always a slight whiff of Ake being carried by the brilliant defenders alongside him at City, with his lesser quality managed through the excellence of Ruben Dias, Manuel Akanji and John Stones before Guardiola bought Josko Gvardiol to firmly push Ake out of the picture.
He’s also had eight separate injury lay-offs since April 2023, missing 46 games.
Bernardo Silva
He’s having a quietly terrible season while throwing stones in a glass house and the City bosses are now presumably wishing they had welcomed what would have been very significant offers from PSG or Barcelona in the summer rather than dismissing the notion of selling Silva before they even came to the negotiating table.
With just a year left to run on his contract at the end of comfortably his worst ever season for City they’ll be lucky to get half the transfer fee they could have done for a player who’s been linked with an exit for just about as long as he’s been at the club.
James McAtee
We can’t be 100 per cent sure he’s not a Cole Palmer, and how we would laugh if that turned out to be the case, but Palmer would surely have been playing had his last season at City been as bad the current campaign, while McAtee’s only featured for 341 Premier League minutes and didn’t even make the squad for the semi-final and final of the FA Cup. A move to Spurs makes a lot of sense.
Rico Lewis
We were for a long time baffled by Guardiola’s use of Nunes at right-back, and by Kyle Walker continuing in that role amid his notable struggles before jumping ship to AC Milan, because Rico Lewis was Right There, but the penny dropped in the first leg of their Champions League last 16 clash with Real Madrid.
There’s no great shame in being done by Vinicius Junior, but to look quite so under-equipped and overawed in a big game was a worry. Lewis has started just six games since and didn’t even make the FA Cup final squad despite scoring the opener in the semi-final against Nottingham Forest.
City have now moved ahead of Arsenal and Manchester City to sign Flamengo star Wesley this summer as an alternative for the right-back position.
Ederson
City supposedly knocked back Al Nassr’s bid of £25m in the summer, wanting £30m for their goalkeeper, and we’re guessing whoever made that decision has been beating themselves up for not upgrading Ederson – who’s been a far better creator than goalkeeper this season – over what amounts to a rounding error from one of their ever-diligent accountants.
The Saudi Pro League will presumably be back, but likely with a smaller bid given Ederson’s deal expires at the end of next season.
Jack Grealish
Guardiola said back in January that he wanted “the treble Grealish” to call upon, and the Catalan boss has evidently not seen enough in training to convince him of that player’s return in the meantime having since handed the forward just one Premier League start and 47 substitute minutes besides.
His £300,000 per week wages are predictably a ‘massive’ problem for Napoli and we imagine any other interested club outside Saudi Arabia, but it’s criminal for us not to be able to watch Grealish playing football on a regular basis. Nottingham Forest could need a No.10…
Manuel Akanji
He’s made enough uncharacteristic errors this season to make them characteristic and appears to be suffering more than anyone from the premature aging process that’s blighting so many members of Guardiola’s squad. He’s only 29 but is playing like a guy with at least three more years in his legs, and we could see Real Madrid or Bayern Munich making a decent enough bid to prompt a sale.
John Stones
His contract expires next summer and having missed 33 games this season in four separate layoffs, City would surely accept any reasonable bid for a brilliant footballer whose body is letting him down. A return to Everton as a marquee Dick Hill signing would be lovely.