Guardiola admits potential transfer ‘mistake’ with ’10 months’ claim made after Alvarez sale
Pep Guardiola has admitted that not replacing Julian Alvarez could be a “mistake” for Manchester City, but he would prefer not to have players waiting “10 months” without appearing.
All of City’s transfer business was done with a week left to go in the summer window. Savinho was announced as a City player before the window had even opened, before Ilkay Gundogan joined on August 23.
The latter seemed as if he was perhaps not on the club’s radar, with him approaching Guardiola, not the other way around. It seems City are all done in terms of inbounds, but the lack of one particular inbound transfer is of note.
City let attacking star Alvarez leave for Atletico Madrid, for £82million, which meant they could have signed a good quality player to replace him.
But they have decided not to recruit up top, which means that Erling Haaland is the only recognised senior striker in the squad.
Guardiola has admitted that it could come back to bite him, but not adding another star to the mix is for the good of the players.
“Maybe it is a mistake, I don’t know, but I like to work with not a long, long squad,” he said, quoted by BBC Sport.
“I don’t like to leave a lot of players without playing for a long time. If we have a long squad with no injuries, that could be 10 months without playing and I don’t like it.”
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Indeed, on the form he has shown during his time at City, particularly with four goals in two games so far this season, Haaland is the definitive starter up top, and a new striker may then have sat behind him on the bench all campaign.
Alvarez did his fair share of watching Haaland without being on the pitch, and a lot of his appearances came in other positions, owing to his versatility.
But he is a unicorn in the sense that he is very competent in a number of positions, where another forward may not be, and Guardiola saw little point in recruiting a one-dimensional player.
If Haaland is to be injured, he has attacking talents who could do a job up top despite not being actual strikers.
