Guardiola wants eight new City starters – report

Daniel Storey

Pep Guardiola has told Manchester City that he needs eight new first-team players, according to a report in the Daily Mirror.

An exclusive by Dave Kidd claims that the only current City players that Guardiola is happy to see starting next season are Sergio Aguero, Kevin de Bruyne and Fernandinho, plus Vincent Kompany after he returns from injury. Poor Joe Hart and David Silva.

However, the report also states that City are aware that it will take them two summers to make the changes that Pep desires, which means they would buy four players this summer. That’s sort of where we thought they would be anyway.

Kidd also slips in the news that Raheem Sterling’s future at Manchester City is unsure, because the ‘two-touch style of play demanded of him by Manuel Pellegrini – and also favoured by Guardiola – does not suit his natural strengths of dribbling at pace at opposition defenders’.

Guardiola doesn’t allow players to dribble? Because Arjen Robben certainly had a bloody awful time under Guardiola at Bayern, didn’t he? And Lionel Messi became notorious for his lack of dribbling under Pep at Barcelona.

Anyway, we are given a list of transfer targets, all of whom have been mentioned before. And we mean every one: Danny Rose, Jack Wilshere, John Stones, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (Ha!), Aymeric Laporte, Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Ilkay Gundogan and Leroy Sane.

Still, it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to be a busy old summer at the Etihad.