Guardiola wanted a smaller squad. Instead it’s grown. How can Man City trim it?

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It has been 73 days since Pep Guardiola said he would quit Manchester City if he did not have a smaller squad next season.

That was in May, after a comfortable win at home against Bournemouth, when his lip quivered after committing what he views as the heinous act of leaving four senior players festering at home.

Joking or not, he might have to leave a dozen at home for the opening match against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Two weeks out from the start of the new Premier League season, the mission to condense the squad still needs work. Rather than trim, City have made a net addition of two first-team players this summer.

Sometimes, taking two steps forward and one step back is the way to progress. That is certainly how City will view it, having acted rapidly to acquire their main targets before the Club World Cup.

Buying before selling has the benefit that other clubs cannot hold them to ransom, knowing there is money burning a hole in their pocket.

But signing James Trafford, Marcus Bettinelli, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki means Guardiola has 31 players.

While there has been a conscious effort to reduce the squad’s average age and wage bill, it is an expensive squad to run, with several players surplus to requirements and others seemingly having little chance of regular minutes.

Here is The Athletic’s assessment of the situation…

What needs to be done?

City had the luxury of two leading men for part of this summer. New sporting director Hugo Viana, almost four months into his role since joining from Sporting CP, was being supported by director of football Txiki Begiristain as part of a transition, but he ended his 13-year spell this week.

Viana will continue to be aided by Carlos Raphael Moersen, who is director of football transactions at City Football Group (CFG, the club’s overarching owner) and has been helping lead some negotiations with prospective buyers this summer.

City have brought in some money — Kyle Walker has moved to Burnley for a fee that could reach £5million ($6.6m), Maximo Perrone’s switch to Como is worth €15million (£13m; $17m) and €24m has arrived after Yan Couto’s loan deal at Borussia Dortmund was made permanent.

But to get numbers down, established players will have to leave soon.

Finding permanent takers for Kalvin Phillips, given the financial package of a fee plus wages, has been tricky. Jack Grealish and James McAtee are expected to leave too.

Kalvin Phillips was on loan at relegated Ipswich Town last season (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)

The fourth expected exit is goalkeeper Stefan Ortega, as City now have four senior goalkeepers following Trafford’s arrival.

City want Ederson to stay until the end of his contract next year and are open to selling Ortega, who also has a year left on his deal and wants to play regularly as he looks to break into Germany’s squad for the World Cup next summer.

Then there is the possibility of allowing younger players to go out on loan. Sverre Nypan, the 18-year-old who joined from Rosenborg for £12.5million, will go out on loan as part of a development plan but a prospective move to Ajax is thought to no longer be on the cards.

La Liga club Girona, part of the CFG network, are keen on loaning Vitor Reis and Claudio Echeverri.

A year in Spain represents a good development opportunity for Reis, who is 19 and joined the club in January from Palmeiras for £29.5million. He is highly rated internally but showed in his second start for City against Wydad at the Club World Cup that there are parts of his game that need work.

Echeverri is also 19 but represents a different case. Guardiola is a huge admirer and saw fit to bring Echeverri on for his debut in the FA Cup final just months after arriving from Argentina.

Girona would love to have him, while Roma have made a case for a year in Italy, but City are deliberating whether it would be better to keep him in-house to learn from the manager and other forwards such as Erling Haaland and Omar Marmoush.

Oscar Bobb is very likely to stay, with the 22-year-old winger impressing Guardiola last summer before a fractured leg ruined his season.

Nico O’Reilly faces a fight for minutes due to the arrival of Ait-Nouri at left-back, where he impressed last season. The plan is for O’Reilly, 20, to stay, as he can also operate in his more natural midfielder role.

McAtee is more established but his role last season was largely restricted to substitute cameos. Nottingham Forest have been discussing a fee of around £25million for him but Viana wants more. Eintracht Frankfurt, who McAtee visited last month, view these sums as out of their league.

In defence, City are overstocked, with 10 players across the back four, leading to speculation that one or two could depart. John Stones was not given a single minute at the Club World Cup despite fully recovering from an injury-ravaged season. The England centre-back, who has a year left on his deal, said during the Club World Cup that he did not want to leave and there is no prospect of him departing this summer.

Manuel Akanji and Abdukodir Khusanov are two others with a point to prove. Khusanov, 21, barely featured in the final few months of the season after joining from Nice in January, but no approaches have been made.

In midfield, there is an argument that City are also overstocked. It remains to be seen how quickly Rodri can regain form after his anterior cruciate ligament injury, so the cover provided by Nico Gonzalez and Mateo Kovacic could be important. Tijjani Reijnders can also drop back to play as the deeper No 6.

Tijjani Reijnders was one of City’s summer additions (Kevin C Cox/Getty Images)

Could City face an issue registering players?

Premier League clubs will have to register their official 25-man squad after the transfer window closes on September 1.

They can only name a maximum of 17 non-homegrown senior players, with the rest of the squad comprising ‘homegrown players’ — those who have trained at an English club for three seasons (or 36) months between the ages of 15 and 21, regardless of nationality.

City have 17 non-homegrown players above the age of 21 and nine homegrown players above the age of 21.

That is only one too many, a situation aided by the Premier League rule that dictates under-21 players, those born after January 1, 2004, do not take up spaces in the 25-man squad.

Rico Lewis, Khusanov, Reis, O’Reilly, Savinho and Echeverri all fall into that category, although 22-year-old Bobb becomes a senior homegrown player for the first time.

There are different rules in the Champions League, so if City do not loan or sell anyone else, they would have to leave four non-homegrown players out in the cold.

UEFA’s ‘A list’ does not offer the same blanket exclusion for under-21 players. They have to be under-21 and homegrown, which means Khusanov, Reis, Savinho and Echeverri all require a space, unlike in the Premier League.

Eight spaces are exclusively reserved for locally trained players, with no more than four of that total made up of association-trained players reared at other English clubs.

Even if Grealish, Phillips and McAtee all leave, that will not be an issue for City, with Trafford, O’Reilly, Lewis, Bobb and Foden all club-trained, and Betinelli, Stones and Ake all association-trained. It is another reason the two goalkeepers were recruited this summer.

The risk of carrying such a bloated squad is not just regulatory, however. It is a matter of identity and contentment, too. Players at this level possess egos and pride. They want to contribute and feel like a valued member of the squad but it is difficult to achieve across an entire squad, with so many players being reduced to a spectator role.

City were quick out of the blocks this window but they need to start getting a shift on if they are to satisfy Guardiola’s demand for an optimised squad.

(Top photo: Kalvin Phillips, Jack Grealish and James McAtee in 2023; by Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)

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