Manchester City will need to spend big or promote this summer
Pep Guardiola inherited a relatively decent Manchester City squad when he took the helm in early summer 2016. Although his new team was showing signs of aging, they had finished in the top four of the Premier League and narrowly lost out in the semi-finals of the Champions League—their first time at that stage of the competition ever.
Much to the success of Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini, Guardiola started his tenure at City with a group of players who had chemistry together. His first big job at the Northern-England club was to make key decisions on players who would be allowed to leave, with Nasri, Mangala, Bony and Joe Hart all being sent away.
After 24 weeks of the Premier League season gone, Pep has made the 80 changes to his starting XI– the highest amount in the league this season. Pep still hasn’t found his preferred XI this season and has asked his players to play some unusual positions, as is his nature, with Kolarov and Clichy being asked to play as Center-defenders, Fernandinho as a right-back and Zabaleta holding the midfield line.
Manchester City did very little in the January market but we at Playing for 90 imagine the summer will be quite the opposite for Guardiola and the City Blues. Here is a list of where he will need to spend (and spend big) to make this squad a title contender for the 2017-2018 season.