Pep Guardiola spent some time finding the right words to explain the rationale of Manchester City’s squad before heading to West Ham to kick off the new Premier League season.
Is Manchester City’s squad strong enough to enter the title race this season?
Yes, as Guardiola said in his press conference on Friday, local time, they have enough good academy students; and he himself does not like working with a big team, because every player is involved. Feeling is an important thing.
But Guardiola also admitted that they do need some luck to deal with possible injuries. And if they can’t get the man they want this summer, they can also do something in the January winter transfer window.
“Man Wan” said that there is one thing that is more telling. Guardiola took a full six seconds to pause to think about how he should answer a question, which usually does not have a head coach. Doubts – Guardiola hesitated when asked if City could afford to lose more players without bringing in their replacements, a question in fact until Bernardo Silva, the Manchester City midfielder Currently being lured by Barcelona.
But the problem for City is not just whether the B seat will leave in the new season. The depth of the whole team is currently a very tricky situation. At the beginning of the new season, Manchester City looks to be lacking at least one key player – a key player. Name originally planned to introduce a left-back to replace Zinchenko.
Blue Moon’s number one target Cucurella has been transferred to Chelsea for a price of 62 million pounds. The reason why Stamford Bridge won the Spaniard so decisively, on the one hand, stems from the fact that they made a late shot, and on the other hand On the one hand, City never seem to have set out to meet a similar price tag, with a reported budget of just £30m for the 24-year-old left-back and had expected to spend the summer battling to complete the deal.
Currently, there are only 17 players in the Manchester City squad who have played at least one top game, including Palmer, a youngster who has only started once in October 2021. This is the lowest figure in Guardiola’s seven years in charge of the club, which had at least four more first-team members than now between 2018 and 2020.
As he said, Guardiola really likes to work with small teams and he has also proven that he has the ability to put some players in positions that didn’t belong to them and achieve offbeat success with it, Cancelo is clearly one of them. A clear proof. But with his current team, it’s hard to have the wealthy to continue making cameos in the way he’s used to.
Putting Ake at left-back, for example, would mean City had just two healthy centre-backs in the first month of the season and three when Laporte returned. Unless Palmer makes a stunning positional shift, this lineup is too stretched for a championship team that wants to achieve results in all competitions.
That’s not to say City aren’t good enough to be the favourites to win the Premier League. They are still the kings of the game that any other team on the field will want to learn and beat, and if their newcomers like Haaland and Alvarez can quickly integrate into the team, trying to beat them will be more difficult than ever. difficulty.
But it is an indisputable fact that Guardiola’s season of winning the most trophies at Manchester City was precisely the time when he had the most first-team players. It’s no coincidence that this allowed the tactical experimenter to rotate enough players to handle multiple fronts, win domestic cups, and keep the final months of the season free from increased injuries. and become powerless.
Manchester City are still looking to sign a left-back in the remaining weeks of the transfer window, but neither goals nor time are sufficient.
And if they don’t end up doing that, no matter how crazy their feat of bringing in Haaland, Alvarez and Calvin Phillips in one summer looks, the Premier League this season could be Guardiola’s The most difficult test in the Etihad era, perhaps there will be more silent embarrassment at future conferences.
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