Man City’s £175m splurge and £50m saviour leaves Pep Guardiola out of excuses

Manchester spent £50million on transfer deadline day to take their spending to £175m, spending as much as the rest of the Premier League combined to fix their issues

With Real Madrid in town next week for a blockbuster Champions League play-off, Pep Guardiola may choose to rest his big guns this weekend.

City go to League One Leyton Orient in the FA Cup on Saturday, three days before hosting holders and record 15-time European champions Real. With the showdown against Carlo Ancelotti’s gilded side unquestionably their biggest game of the season, some of City’s new faces are likely to feature at Brisbane Road.

City responded to their crisis-hit season by splurging £175million on signings in the transfer window, the last being midfielder Nico Gonzalez, who joined from Porto on deadline day for £50m. While fellow new signings Abdukodir Khusanov and Omar Marmoush have already made their City debuts, defender Vitor Reis has yet to play, although the 19-year-old was on the bench for Sunday’s 5-1 thrashing at Arsenal.

Gonzalez has been recruited to fill the void left by the enforced loss of Ballon d’Or winner Rodri, who has been sidelined since September after suffering a serious anterior cruciate ligament injury. The 23-year-old is the son of former player Fran Gonzalez, who was in Spain’s Euro 2000 squad with Guardiola. City’s newest signing came through Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy, just like his new boss Guardiola.

Gonzalez could have joined City at 14, when his father was working on their academy coaching staff, but the move never happened and he remained at Barca, making 37 appearances before a loan spell at Valencia and a permanent move to Porto.

His impressive performances for the Portuguese champions caught the eye of City, who made their move for him late in the window, in a bid to salvage their worst season of Guardiola’s glittering nine-year reign. Ostensibly a defensive midfielder in the mould of Rodri, Gonzalez does like to push further forward and make an impact in the final third, underlined by the fact he scored seven goals and produced six assists for Porto this season.

But it is at the base of midfield where his real strength lies and where Guardiola plans to utilise him, with Gonzalez boasting an impressive passing accuracy success of 89.6 percent this season. The Spain Under-21 international is just as influential off the ball as he is on it, with a tenacious ability for ball recovery and tackling complementing his elegant passing technique.

Gonzalez has played 10 times in the Champions League, including both legs of last season’s last 16 tie with Arsenal, while he played the full 90 minutes in Porto’s 3-3 draw with Manchester United in the Europa League this season. The arrival of Gonzalez will ease the pressure on Mateo Kovacic, Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva, all of whom have shouldered the burden of the loss of Rodri, with City having struggled without their midfield colossus.

Guardiola has spent most of the season working against the backdrop of injuries to key players, including Rodri, John Stones, Ruben Dias, Oscar Bobb, Jeremy Doku, Nathan Ake and Ederson, as well as managing the minutes of Kevin De Bruyne following a serious hamstring issue.

City’s unusually significant outlay in the January transfer window could also be a preemptive move in case they are hit with a transfer embargo when the verdict is delivered on the 115 Premier League charges they are facing. A transfer embargo is among the punishments City could face, if they are found guilty of any of the alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules, so stocking up on players now is a prudent course of action.

But City’s significant business in the transfer window – spending almost as much as the rest of the Premier League combined – means Guardiola now has no excuses for failure in the second half of the season, even if a fifth straight title triumph is already beyond him.

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