Manchester City must make sure they don’t see another one of their key players follow Ilkay Gundogan out the door this summer.
Earlier this week, it was announced that after being linked with numerous clubs across Europe, the City captain had made the decision to join Barcelona as a free agent rather than sign a new deal at the Etihad Stadium.
With this departure now confirmed, the focus at the Manchester club, we feel, should be to make sure another player doesn’t end up joining another side this summer – Bernardo Silva.
City must land new in-house deal for Silva
After being linked with a move to Gundogan’s new club last summer, the Portuguese international has once again been mentioned with a transfer switch away from City, with Paris Saint-Germain and Saudi Arabian club, Al-Hilal, looking at him.
To showcase how important the 28-year-old is to his current side and Pep Guardiola, who has described the midfielder as one of the best players he has ever coached, he featured in all but six of City’s games last season, occupying numerous positions across the pitch.
This highlights how much of a blow it would be for the team to not have him available given his reliability and versatility.
Bearing in mind how the City manager shared his hopes of seeing Gundogan stay at the Etihad this summer, potentially seeing Silva walk away as well could potentially put Guardiola’s own future into question should he decide to not sign a new deal beyond his current one.
While the club are reportedly looking to negotiate a deal with RB Leipzig to sign Josko Gvardiol, we feel that convincing Silva, who Kevin De Bruyne hailed as an “unbelievable” player, to stay at City is a bigger priority at this time.
Moving forward, with the European champions reportedly offering the midfielder, who Jack Grealish has also been seen asking to stay at City, a new deal to convince him to remain in England, if he ends up doing that, this will be a great bit of news for everyone at the club.
