Manchester City looked well off the pace in their midweek clash away at Real Madrid, losing the game 3-1 and falling out of the Champions League.
Manchester City’s season takes another hit after they were dumped out of the Champions League by a Real Madrid side who looked leagues better than Pep Guardiola’s side, in both legs of the game.
The first leg saw Real Madrid come from behind to beat City 3-2 at the Etihad. Then at the Bernabeu, Kylian Mbappe scored a hat-trick as Real Madrid thumped City 3-1, and 6-2 on aggregate.
There’s plenty of questions still for Guardiola. But there remains the top four places in the Premier League to fight for, as well as the FA Cup with Man City hosting Championship strugglers Plymouth Argyle in the next round at the start of March.
But that defeat in Madrid has certainly highlighted City’s lack of star quality, and ahead of crunch matches against Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur coming up, there’s plenty of pressure riding on the Cityzens to put in some good performances.
Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer think Man City trio just don’t have the legs anymore
Speaking on The Rest Is Football, Alan Shearer and Gary Linker have given some rather stern thoughts on Man City. In the wake of the Madrid defeat, they say that City simply have too many players whose legs have gone.
Shearer started: “It seems to me as if there’s a, there’s a lot of players that at the same time are coming to the end. And certainly they haven’t got the legs, anywhere near the legs that they used to have last year or the year before. And it just, it just seems to happen at the same time for, I don’t know, maybe four or five of the players.”
Linker then questions whether the likes of Kevin De Bruyne can cut it at the top level any more. Also Bernardo Silva and ‘most certainly’ Ilkay Gundogan, who are 33, 30, and 34 years old respectively.
Linker said: “Yeah, there’s probably De Bruyne, who wasn’t obviously on the pitch, but possibly Bernardo Silva, most certainly Gundogan, 34 years of age. Kyle Walker left, obviously, but the experienced players. I think, I think there’s an element of truth in that.”
Man City have already identified their Kevin De Bruyne replacement
De Bruyne has been an unused substitute in the last two games now. The Belgian has just two goals and six assists in 17 Premier League outings this season, and if the season ended now then it would be the lowest amount of goal contributions that De Bruyne has had in a single Premier League season since 2018/19.
But Guardiola seems to have found his next talisman with reports that Man City want to sign Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen to replace De Bruyne’s creativity in the midfield. But the German could cost upwards of £83million.
Journalist Sacha Tavolieri states that City tried to sign Wirtz in the January transfer window, directly approaching the 21-year-old who has nine goals and nine assists in 22 Bundesliga outings for Leverkusen this season.
City return to action against Premier League leaders Liverpool on Sunday.
