Man City renew interest in “genius” star who’s far better than Grealish

2024 was the yr Manchester City achieved an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League title, however what’s going to 2025 deliver?

Regardless of beating Leicester Metropolis 2-0 on Sunday, Savinho and Erling Haaland on course on the King Energy, Pep Guardiola‘s workforce are nonetheless down in sixth, having yielded a miserly 5 factors from a doable 27 beforehand, with Guardiola admitting his side are “in danger” of lacking out on Champions League qualification.

So, having solely signed the aforementioned Savinho for a reported £33m in the summertime, one would think about the Sky Blues are in a position to spend in January, so will Man Metropolis be busy this month?

Man Metropolis taking a look at Barcelona star

In accordance with a report from Spain, Manchester Metropolis are amongst a bunch of main European golf equipment who’ve all expressed an curiosity in Dani Olmo; fellow-Premier League outfits Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham, in addition to the present high two within the Bundesliga, Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen, are additionally named as ” events”.

So, why is there a lot hypothesis surrounding Olmo’s future, contemplating he is solely simply rejoined Barcelona from RB Leipzig for a fee of €60m (£51m) as not too long ago as August?

Properly, as of midnight on New Yr’s Day, Olmo is technically a free agent, having been deregistered by La Liga for the second half of the season.

La Liga’s strict monetary guidelines, known as Squad Cost Limit, sees the league management how a lot every membership can spend on transfers and, crucially on this case, wages previous to the beginning of the season, based mostly on projected earnings.

To chop a protracted, and doubtlessly sophisticated, story quick, for the primary half of the marketing campaign, Barça deregistered Andreas Christensen after he suffered an Achilles injury towards Valencia on the opening day of the season.

This freed-up house for Olmo’s wages within the Blaugrana’s finances, but now Christensen is fit again, he’s robotically registered with Olmo thereby at present unable to function, with the Catalan giants almost certainly needing to promote another person earlier than this difficulty may be resolved.

Thus, on the time of writing, Olmo is free to speak to and signal for any membership he needs, which might be a serious coup on condition that Josh Bunting has described the Spaniard as a “technical genius”, so might a transfer to Manchester Metropolis be his subsequent vacation spot?

How Dani Olmo would enhance Manchester Metropolis

Truthful to say, Manchester Metropolis might do with some further attacking firepower.

Haaland’s header on the weekend took his tally to 19 for the campaign however, behind the Norwegian, Joško Gvardiol is their second-top scorer, with Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, Jérémy Doku, Kevin De Bruyne, Savinho and Jack Grealish scoring simply 13 objectives between them this season, a pitifully low tally after 28 matches.

The one member of that sextet nonetheless but to get off the mark is Grealish; it’s actually 383 days, and counting, since his final membership objective.

As one prominent social media account mischievously put it on Twitter, Gabriel Jesus has now scored extra objectives in 2025 than Grealish managed all through the whole thing of 2024.

This lack of end-product means the Residents will certainly be trying to improve, so how do Grealish and Olmo evaluate?

As outlined within the desk above, for the reason that begin of final season, Olmo’s statistics considerably exceed these of Grealish, scoring 4 instances as many objectives in fewer minutes, whereas his objectives – xG determine of +4.9 underlines the Spaniard’s effectivity in entrance of objective.

Additionally, opposite to his earlier fame as a maverick, Olmo tried 40 extra take-ons and was vastly extra profitable when it got here to dribbles, underlining Richard Jolly’s belief that Guardiola’s regimented system doesn’t get the very best out of Grealish.

Olmo has been deployed each centrally and on the left by Barça boss Hansi Flick, suggesting he might slot seamlessly into Man Metropolis’s workforce in both position and would possibly simply be the attacking difference-maker the beleaguered champions have to spark their season into life.

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