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After tamely relinquishing their crown to final season, look set to launch one other robust bid for the Premier League title in 2025/26.
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Pep Guardiola’s aspect closed out 2025 with eight straight wins in all competitions, a run that left them well-placed for a route straight into the UEFA Champions League knockout rounds and able to contest a Carabao Cup semifinal in opposition to holders .
Metropolis’s startling mid-season collapse in 2024/25 prompted a a lot busier January switch window than has been the norm underneath Guardiola, whereas Tijjani Reijnders, Rayan Ait-Nouri and Rayan Cherki have been all by means of the door in time for Metropolis’s FIFA Membership World Cup marketing campaign in June.
An overhaul of the goalkeeping division adopted, with James Trafford and Gianluigi Donnarumma arriving both aspect of Ederson’s departure to Fenerbahce and, in accordance with widespread experiences, the overhaul isn’t completed. winger Antoine Semenyo is about to maneuver to the Etihad Stadium in a deal price within the area of £65million.
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Semenyo scored when the Cherries beat Metropolis 2-1 on the Vitality Stadium final season and this time round he has been one of many Premier League’s excellent gamers, scoring 9 targets and laying on three assists in 17 appearances.
However how will he match right into a squad full of attacking and inventive expertise, whereas adapting to Guardiola’s particular calls for in mid-season?
Why are Man Metropolis signing Antoine Semenyo?Launch clause
Regardless that long-serving sporting director Txiki Begiristain left the constructing final summer season, Metropolis aren’t about to let go of their Launch Clause FC standing. Regardless of — or, extra possible, due to – their standing as one of the financially highly effective golf equipment in world soccer, Metropolis have historically been reluctant to become involved within the bidding wars that have a tendency to return with a participant like Semenyo being available on the market. If there was not an higher ceiling of £65m on the switch, it’s unlikely Begiristain’s successor Hugo Viana can be on the negotiating desk.
บอร์นมัธ พบ แมนเชสเตอร์ ซิตี้ ฟุตบอลพรีเมียร์ลีก 2024-25
Lack of a constant proper winger
Insofar as he has one, the right-hand aspect of the assault is one thing of an issue place for Guardiola. Jeremy Doku and Omar Marmoush every strongly favor to play off the left. The identical might presumably be mentioned for Savinho, who nominally performs on the correct for Metropolis however produced his greatest performances for Girona on the left wing.
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Oscar Bobb began as Metropolis’s first alternative proper winger this season however has continued to bleed type and confidence after the leg break that ruined what regarded like being a breakout 2024/25. Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden and Rayan Cherki have all stuffed in on the correct this time period, however have drifted in-field to the central areas the place they’re most snug, leaving transformed full-back Matheus Nunes to produce many of the width.
Semenyo is snug on each flanks however the correct seems to be his most definitely residence at Metropolis, particularly with Doku and Marmoush round. Bobb was linked with a mortgage transfer to Borussia Dortmund because the Semenyo story gathered tempo.
Pep Guardiola’s altering model
A number of observers have famous that Semenyo’s direct and hard-running model doesn’t make him a pure match for a Guardiola group, and never with out good purpose. Consider the job Bernardo Silva and Jack Grealish did in Metropolis’s treble-winning group, the place a key a part of their job was to assist management the tempo, cherish possession and get the group up the sphere for the likes of Kevin De Bruyne to do harm by means of the center.
Semenyo would have arguably have been a fish out of water in that Metropolis group, however this one is a unique beast. Actually throughout the first few months of the season, they have been a aspect way more reliant on transitions than any of Guardiola’s earlier iterations, and Doku and Erling Haaland thrived. This has modified over current weeks, with extra proof of managed dominance in a group full of central midfielders.
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Nonetheless, Guardiola seems to have accepted that his splendid of 75% possession and minimal pictures in opposition to is tougher to attain within the trendy Premier League. That is still the aim, however a better proportion of groups have the teaching experience and enjoying expertise to defuse a enjoying model that has outlined a lot of the previous 20 years in soccer. Metropolis now have a group of gamers who imply they’ll nonetheless win once they do not hog the ball.
In Donnarumma, he has a goalkeeper who makes saves and does little else; Haaland is a goal-scoring machine who has a reasonable impression in total play. Apart from these two apparent specialists, signings akin to Doku, Nunes, Savinho, Marmoush and Tiajni Reijnders are all gamers who thrive as ball-carriers who can exploit transitions. Semenyo’s signing continues this sample, whereas the truth that Guardiola is nearer to the top than the start of his tenure implies that all of Viana’s new signing should be made with one eye on life after Pep.
Dependence on Haaland
Semenyo is the third highest scorer within the Premier League this season however nonetheless has 10 fewer targets than Haaland. Any group with a participant placing up such gargantuan numbers will probably be depending on them to some extent. and depended fairly closely upon and respectively a decade in the past, and nobody felt this was an enormous drawback.
Erling Haaland
Nonetheless, Metropolis felt dangerously Haaland-or-bust throughout the opening months of this season. Foden, Cherki and, extra just lately, Reijnders have since come to the social gathering by way of sharing the aim burden, however an injury-hit marketing campaign to this point for Marmoush means the huge attackers are nonetheless not pulling their weight.
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For all his undoubted skills, Doku isn’t a participant prone to run up huge numbers of targets. The identical might be mentioned for Savinho, as was the case with Grealish. Semenyo’s signing may nudge Guardiola again to the instances when he might set his watch by Riyadh Mahrez and Raheem Sterling racking up double figures each season.