Pep Guardiola has a wish list for five players to improve his Manchester City squad as the January transfer window approaches.
The Catalan coach is enduring an unprecedented run of poor form at City, having won just once in 13 games. The Premier League champions have dropped to seventh place, 14 points behind leaders Liverpool.
Guardiola would like to see new players arrive after the New Year, if the club's position allows it. The Citizens have suffered a number of defensive injuries, with Rodri unavailable for most of the season.
“If we can, we should definitely add players,” he told Amazon Prime Video before being asked which positions needed to be strengthened. “We are struggling especially at the back and in the middle,” he added.
“I don't know if it will happen. I think it should, but I don't know if it will happen. The transfer period in the winter is not easy.”
According to The Times, Martín Zubimendi, Bruno Guimaraes, Jamal Musiala, Florian Wirtz and Marc Guehi are all being considered. Zubimendi and Guimaraes would provide City with more help in midfield to make up for Rodri's absence.
Guardiola's side have previously been linked with both players, but the latter is likely to prove prohibitively expensive, as is his importance to Newcastle. Zubimendi opted to turn down a move to Liverpool this summer and stay at Real Sociedad.
Guehi, meanwhile, saw bids from Newcastle worth £70million not accepted by Crystal Palace this summer. The Eagles held on to a premium price for the centre-back after an impressive summer with England at the 2024 European Championship.
Bundesliga stars Musiala and Wirtz offer many more attacking options, while both German internationals are down to 21 players. A move in January will make it even more difficult.
Neither will prove cheap to beat their clubs with Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen respectively, and they are unlikely to be keen to sell star players.
Regardless, Guardiola believes injuries have had the biggest impact on the team's decline. “Sometimes you have injuries,” Guardiola said. “For how many years we were incredibly consistent, but now we are in a bit of trouble and the main reason is that so many key players are injured.
“But I saw the team spirit, how we trained this week, how focused they are, how they try to practice. We saw that against Everton, but unfortunately we couldn't get the result we wanted.”
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