There will be new faces: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has spoken for the first time about the club’s transfer plans this summer

There will be new faces: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has spoken for the first time about the club’s transfer plans this summer

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola

News sounds better for Manchester City fans when it comes straight from the mouth of Pep Guardiola.

 

It has been an anxious start to the transfer window for the Blues, with no apparent signs of cover for Rodri and a host of top names linked with big-money moves to the Saudi Pro League. Reports in theManchester Evening News and elsewhere that Kevin De Bruyne was unlikely to go have been there, but that hasn’t stopped the noise promoting a potential switch.

 

On Tuesday in North Carolina, City’s manager was unequivocal about the situation. “Kevin isn’t leaving,” he said. Even that may not stop the speculation, but it should make City fans feel a lot better hearing it from their coach rather than reporters.

 

In his first address of the season, Guardiola elaborated on the position City find themselves in in the transfer market. There are players they would like to sign that are too expensive, but the squad does not need major surgery and it would not be financially responsible or possible to bring in seven or eight new faces.

 

There was exciting talk about new winger Savinho, and also an unprompted mention of young midfielder James McAtee after spending two years on loan at Sheffield United. McAtee wants to make the grade at the Etihad this summer to be part of the first-team squad for the season, and Guardiola made it known without anyone asking that he would like that as well.

 

 

Guardiola has spoken in previous seasons about the hunger that new signings or academy faces bring to the first-team squad, and sees in McAtee the potential to add something that they didn’t have the previous year. It may not be as exciting as a new £60m arrival from La Liga, but that has never really been the City way.

 

“The squad is long enough, if someone leaves we talk about that,” the coach said. “Of course, until the last day, we have chances – I don’t rule out the option to have new players but if anyone leaves, I think 85, 90, 95 per cent we will have the same squad.

 

“I feel comfortable, because the quality of human beings we have in the squad is difficult to be replaced, and the quality is there. But we’ll see, I don’t know in the last moment if someone comes for some players and they leave, we’re going to decide.”

 

Some kind of cover for Rodri still feels essential, and the lingering talk around Ederson may continue to be unsettling, but when City fans hear Guardiola talk about their squad like that it gives a lot more comfort that was there before.