Pep Guardiola Must Trim Flab from Squad to Make Manchester City Lean and Mean

It’s taken Manchester City longer than usual to bring their summer targets to the club this year, but they are likely to be satisfied with the business they have done so far.

They’ve spent around £160 million on Ilkay Gundogan, Nolito, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Leroy Sane, Gabriel Jesus, John Stones and Marlos Moreno.

Zinchenko and Moreno will be stored away for the future, with their immediate development overseen elsewhere, but the others have added some much-needed quality to a squad that was struggling badly as last season drew to a close.

In a market where value is rare, City appear to have done well. Ilkay Gundogan was a snip at £20 million, and at £13.8 million, the same price Crystal Palace paid for Andros Townsend, Nolito was a sensible deal. He’s a Spain international who was chased by Barcelona this summer. He may be 29, but he’s already shown he can bring great passing quality to a side that will look to play a possession-based game.

Jesus is perhaps the signing most celebrated in the Etihad boardroom, with City having beaten the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich to his signature. Jesus, 19, is one of the finest young South American talents. Every club in the world would love to have him. It was City who barged their way to the front of the bustling queue, thanks in part to a personal phone call to the player from manager Pep Guardiola.

Where City are yet to make much headway is with outgoings. Their squad as it stands is too bloated. Yaya Toure, Wilfried Bony, Samir Nasri and Eliaquim Mangala are yet to make a matchday squad—four established players sat on huge wages. Something needs to give.

Toure, at 33, is past his best, and Guardiola’s reasoning for leaving him out of the 21-man squad that travelled to Romania was telling. “He is a player of us and he is training amazing, but I was not sure if he was going to play, and so I prefer it if he stays there training good in Manchester,” he said.

“We travelled with two young guys, and for the selection I prefer it to be the young guys than Yaya Toure.

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“I prefer it if he stays there training and focuses on the next game. I have a lot of respect of him, for his career and quality, but for the first days—against Sunderland—we were looking for a more intensive game. That is why he didn’t play, the only reason why.”

The suggestion that Toure …

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