Man City transfer stance could hand Treble heroes another chance

Manchester City do not want players who cannot be fit for multiple games a week, but they may have built up enough cover at centre-back

It has become clear over the course of the season that Pep Guardiola is reluctant to part with the players who have given him so much joy. He has stuck with his experienced players through a difficult season even as their own form dipped and there were others waiting to step in, and won't say a bad word about them.

That includes their futures, with the Manchester City manager talking up the recent performances of Ilkay Gundogan after triggering another year at the Etihad, even if the veteran midfielder may yet leave this summer. As much as Guardiola has spoken of needing a bigger squad next year, he is reluctant for it to be much bigger because of how 'awful' he finds leaving players out of his matchday squad - as he did with Vitor Reis and Oscar Bobb on Saturday.

At the same time, as the injury crisis has gone from days to weeks to months, it has become clear that City can't rely on players who they can't rely on to stay fit. When deciding on a squad for next season, everyone in it has to be able to compete every week.

"The most important is to analyse who will be more reliable than the other ones," Guardiola said last week. "The player is reliable? Okay, we’ll need more.

"If the player’s like this this season or last season, playing 20 per cent of the games or 25 per cent of the games, if he stays maybe we will get another player for that position because he is not reliable. We’ll have to make a bigger squad.

"More than the quality, as I have no doubts on that. If you ask me about the squad this season, it has been exceptional.

"I have no complaints, the problem is we don’t have them. If you ask me to analyse the players all fit - the Rodri, John [Stones], Nathan [Ake], Manu [Akanji], Erling [Haaland] - all of them fit, the team is exceptional. But unfortunately during the season we haven’t had that."

City took a decision to go without Kevin De Bruyne next season despite the club great disagreeing with the decision, and Stones and Ake are potentially in the firing line. If neither of them starts another game before the end of the season, they will have managed six (16 per cent) and eight (21 per cent) league games respectively out of a possible 38.

Both of those totals are lower than the nine of Kyle Walker, who missed a month with injury and then left for AC Milan in January because he didn't think he'd been played enough. Anything like such a poor attendance record surely can't be risked again.

However, City now have a much better stock of centre-backs. Where the decision to rely on four was disastrous, they have added two more in the January window and Josko Gvardiol has also moved inside in recent weeks.

So well has Gvardiol done alongside Ruben Dias that, with the January additions, City aren't likely to sign another player for that position in the summer. That may not mean that both Ake and Stones, so colossal during the Treble season, can escape scrutiny over their place in the squad next season, but it may just be enough to give either or both of them another chance to prove they can do better at staying clear of injuries.

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