Manchester City Urged To Move In For This Crystal Palace Defender: Should Pep Go For Him?
'When they won the Champions League a couple of years ago, I think they won it on being very, very tough to score against.
'That was their key that season. Everything fell into place.
'The back four was pretty consistent and played extremely well together. Kyle Walker dealt with any problems. They had that extra bit at the back. That was their strong card.
'It does worry me a little bit. If I was in their situation, Marc Guehi would be one I would go after. I'm a big fan of this kid. He's got the ability to deal with things one-on-one on the counter-attack.
'You've got to be good at that if you're a Manchester City player in the expansive way they play. But if anything's going to be their Achilles heel, it's going to be that back line again.'
Guehi's Impressive Form In English Football Last Season
The English defensive ace had a solid campaign at the London club after he put in a string of impressive displays for them on the defensive third of the pitch. Guehi deserves a ton of credit for helping Crystal Palace win the FA Cup last season. He netted three times and picked up a couple of assists in 44 appearances for the Eagles in the previous campaign across various competitions.
LONDON, ENGLAND – MARCH 24: Marc Guehi of England during the FIFA World Cup 2026 European Qualifier between England and Latvia at Wembley Stadium on March 24, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by)
The 25-year-old was a rock at the back and did well to make 61 tackles, 55 blocks and 28 interceptions in Premier League football. Guehi was even tidy when distributing possession after completing 83.5% of his attempted passes in the English first division (stats via fbref.com).
Should Manchester City Boss Pep Guardiola Go For Guehi?
Guehi is a solid tackler of the ball and can scan the danger well to earn the ball back for his team inside his half. He doesn't mind clearing the danger when required and can play his way out from the back.
Guehi would add a lot of quality to Manchester City head coach Pep Guardiola's defence. He is good enough to secure a regular starting place at the Etihad Stadium next season.
At 25, Guehi has his peak years ahead of him which makes him an excellent option for the Mancunian giants to pursue this summer. Hence, Guardiola should focus on listening to Pearce's advice by going for a defender of his skill set this off-season.
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New York Times
2 minutes ago
- New York Times
Beto interview: From playing in car parks and working at KFC to idolising Eto'o and Lukaku
Amid the swirl of delirium and chaos following Everton's 2-2 draw against Liverpool in February, one player embarked on an individual lap of honour. Beto scored the opening goal of the final Merseyside derby at Goodison Park and an upturn in form under the returning David Moyes imbued the striker with fresh confidence. Advertisement 'To tell you the truth,' says Beto, 'I had thought the derby was just (another) game. But within the club, people like Seamus (Coleman) and Tony, the kit man, were saying, 'You guys need to beat them'. 'Playing in that game, I fully understood this. I was like, 'Wow, this is really good'; the tackles, they go strong, we go strong, they give it to me and I give it to them. I love this — the battle. Now the derby is in my blood. I don't want to lose any game, but that game — I really don't want to lose it.' Undefeated in 16 of their final 19 top-flight matches under Moyes last season, Everton owed much to Beto, the 6ft 4in (193cm) forward who had toiled during his first 16 months at the club. Signed under Sean Dyche for an initial fee of £21.5million ($28.5m) in August 2023, Beto scored three Premier League goals in his first season, and he had only one to his name in his second when Moyes took over in January. The 27-year-old says he was on the brink of a move to Italy — only for an injury to Dominic Calvert-Lewin in the win at Brighton on January 25 to force Everton to keep him. From there, Beto scored crucial goals against Leicester City, Liverpool, Crystal Palace and Manchester United as Everton soared to safety. The striker, who Moyes describes as 'rough and raucous', transformed himself into a cult hero. Speaking to The Athletic in a hotel lobby during Everton's pre-season tour in New York City, Beto reflects, in absorbing detail, on a life and career that has taken him from playing in car parks on the outskirts of Lisbon, via a job at fast-food chain KFC, to a striker in the most competitive league in world football. Beto grew up in the coastal municipality of Cascais, around half an hour's drive from the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. He describes growing up in a 'project' neighbourhood — essentially a form of social housing. 'I liked it a lot,' he says. 'We didn't have much; we didn't have parks or football pitches, but we played two-vs-two, or three-vs-three games in car parks.' Advertisement He wanted to play locally for a club team as a child, but the costs to register stretched the family's budget. 'For Mum (Filomena), we didn't have so much money to spend on extra activities. For Mum, football was just a side activity. She preferred school, school, school.' Beto, a Guinea-Bissau international, played football at break time and realised, despite his lack of practice, that his level was higher than many of his peers. His mum relented at the age of nine and he started to play at the weekends. At home, access to the internet and satellite television was rare, meaning he watched very little football. 'One day, we were choosing the number of the jersey on my shirt and I didn't have any role model in football to refer to. 'They said, 'Oh, you're a striker, you need to wear the No 9 like Samuel Eto'o'. I said, 'I don't know (who) Eto'o (is), but, OK, I can be No 9'.' That summer, in 2009, Barcelona played the Champions League final against Man United, and Eto'o scored. 'My friend's family lived on the ground floor of my building and had television access. I was by the window outside watching the game. I saw the goal and Eto'o's celebration and thought, 'This is the guy they all told me about'. So I said, 'OK, let me follow this guy'. He became my idol.' Later, when he bought a mobile phone, he watched video compilations of Eto'o's goals. He later became inspired by players such as Didier Drogba, Romelu Lukaku and Christian Benteke. He saw in their stories, as Black players who overcame challenging upbringings, a little of himself. 'It makes you think, 'Maybe, just maybe, I can do it, too'. You never know.' Beto's beginnings in football were not conventional. He spent only one year in an elite academy before being released by Benfica at the age of 14. He then spent two years barely playing before making his start in senior football in the Portuguese amateur leagues. 'When I was at Benfica, I didn't think about being a professional. I was afraid. I could feel and always knew I was not at their level. So when they released me, I said, 'It's OK with me. I'm not as good as I thought I was'. It was a reality check. Advertisement 'I spent two years in no man's land. I was doing stupid stuff — I wasn't playing, I wasn't studying… I was thinking I don't care about the world. My mum took me out from football because I wasn't behaving well in school. 'I have one thing in my mind from Benfica. I asked one guy, 'Do you think you're going to be professional?'. He said, 'Yes, of course'. I was like, 'F*****g hell, this guy is not afraid'. He said: 'If I'm not professional here, I will be professional in another place'. I wasn't thinking like that. I was afraid to say it.' As Beto's potential career teetered, he threw himself into earning money. He worked at KFC. 'It was good. I always wanted to earn my own money. Until I was 15 or 16, I acted spoiled. I tried to have what my friends in school had and I didn't have the awareness that my mum couldn't afford things. 'My friend would say his dad paid for his driving licence, and I would go home and ask my mum for a driving licence. Now, with time, I see the things that my mum personally went through for me and my sisters. 'The first job I did was working in the woodland cutting the weeds. I did one month of work, they paid me €300. Every day, I was happy to go to work because I knew I would have my reward. I gave my mum some of it to help her pay the bills. She wanted me to go through college, but I told her I can't go. It was too boring. I just didn't have interest at all. I would go there and want to sleep. I said, 'No, this is not for me'. One thing was sure; if I was not going to college, I would not be allowed to sit at home. I needed to put money in the house.' Playing amateur football, he would work in the day and train at night, before playing games on a Sunday — his one day off. 'Every form of work is good to humble yourself,' he says, recalling the shifts at KFC. Beto played at amateur and lower-league levels for Uniao Tires and Olimpico Montijo before breaking into the top flight with Portimonense. He earned a move to Udinese in Serie A and then Everton. 'Mum gave me discipline. She and my sister educated me, so I never went to the wrong side. I remember when I told her I want to make it as a professional. For me to have even been thinking about the Premier League is just like… You are kidding! I knew the minimum salary for a professional footballer in Portugal was €1,250. No one in our family earned a thousand. I just thought if I became professional, I can help pay the bills. Advertisement 'Even in Italy, I never thought that I would go to England. But then Everton came! Everton of Lukaku! My mind was saying Lukaku played there, Eto'o played there. So if I could play in Everton, it would be a dream. I think I'm blessed.' Beto is thoughtful about his unusual football education. 'It helps me in some ways, but in some aspects of my game, I miss those basics that you learn when you are in an academy. 'It is the simplest things; passing one touch, receiving the ball, holding the ball. You learn these in professional academies because you do repetition, whereas at the smallest clubs like mine, we just go there, train, and it's less specific.' Moyes tells The Athletic that 'the modern-day centre-half wants to be no-contact, but Beto wants to do things differently — he is running in behind, he's a powerful, big boy, he's got bits about him which you wouldn't enjoy playing against'. He adds, 'A lot of managers would say they're always worried about Beto. His unpredictability for us… is certainly the same for the defenders as well.' In Italy, Beto learned from other leading strikers. 'The first time I saw aura was Zlatan Ibrahimovic. We drew 1-1, I scored and he scored. When I played against Lukaku, he recognised me. He said, 'You are playing better, keep going'. I was very happy. I said, 'Wow, I made it. These small things are really good for me'.' Beto admits to finding his start to life at Everton challenging. 'Everything was too physical,' he says. 'The intensity killed me. I wasn't playing well. I started losing confidence. Without confidence, I can't do nothing. It was a tough season, but it was good to train my mind because it was stressful. 'I was going home and looking at my videos from Italy and saying, 'But I can play football, why is it not working?'. You question yourself a lot and this is the worst part. It was a blessing, too, because I learned from that.' Advertisement Moyes says Beto's determination stands out: 'Every day we are saying, 'Come on, will you come off the training ground?'. He really is trying to improve in everything he does.' Beto says, 'I care about training. It brings me fire. If training goes not so well, I want to do extra — just to feed myself a little.' In his first season, Beto struggled with the criticism he received on social media. 'It was not easy. I used to (pay attention). If I or Everton posted a picture, I would go to the comments and they might say Beto was not good today. This is not good to read because you can be strong, but you're going to create something in your subconscious by taking all the comments in. If you care about the criticism, whether it is good or bad, it can make you shake. The ego is a difficult thing to balance.' Last summer, ahead of the new season, he worked overtime to prepare his body for the rigours of a full Premier League season. 'If I get my fitness right for the Premier League, I think I can smash everyone. This was my mindset. I trained so hard in the off-season. The beginning of the season wasn't the way I wanted. By the end, all the work that I put in paid off.' The challenge now, as Everton seek to strengthen their forward line, is to do it all over again. 'I have a goal target, but that is personal. Nobody knows it — even the manager. I want to be a better player and goalscorer than I was last season.'


New York Times
2 minutes ago
- New York Times
Guardiola wanted a smaller squad. Instead it's grown. How can Man City trim it?
It has been 73 days since Pep Guardiola said he would quit Manchester City if he did not have a smaller squad next season. That was in May, after a comfortable win at home against Bournemouth, when his lip quivered after committing what he views as the heinous act of leaving four senior players festering at home. Advertisement Joking or not, he might have to leave a dozen at home for the opening match against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Two weeks out from the start of the new Premier League season, the mission to condense the squad still needs work. Rather than trim, City have made a net addition of two first-team players this summer. Sometimes, taking two steps forward and one step back is the way to progress. That is certainly how City will view it, having acted rapidly to acquire their main targets before the Club World Cup. Buying before selling has the benefit that other clubs cannot hold them to ransom, knowing there is money burning a hole in their pocket. But signing James Trafford, Marcus Bettinelli, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki means Guardiola has 31 players. While there has been a conscious effort to reduce the squad's average age and wage bill, it is an expensive squad to run, with several players surplus to requirements and others seemingly having little chance of regular minutes. Here is The Athletic's assessment of the situation… City had the luxury of two leading men for part of this summer. New sporting director Hugo Viana, almost four months into his role since joining from Sporting CP, was being supported by director of football Txiki Begiristain as part of a transition, but he ended his 13-year spell this week. Viana will continue to be aided by Carlos Raphael Moersen, who is director of football transactions at City Football Group (CFG, the club's overarching owner) and has been helping lead some negotiations with prospective buyers this summer. City have brought in some money — Kyle Walker has moved to Burnley for a fee that could reach £5million ($6.6m), Maximo Perrone's switch to Como is worth €15million (£13m; $17m) and €24m has arrived after Yan Couto's loan deal at Borussia Dortmund was made permanent. Advertisement But to get numbers down, established players will have to leave soon. Finding permanent takers for Kalvin Phillips, given the financial package of a fee plus wages, has been tricky. Jack Grealish and James McAtee are expected to leave too. The fourth expected exit is goalkeeper Stefan Ortega, as City now have four senior goalkeepers following Trafford's arrival. City want Ederson to stay until the end of his contract next year and are open to selling Ortega, who also has a year left on his deal and wants to play regularly as he looks to break into Germany's squad for the World Cup next summer. Then there is the possibility of allowing younger players to go out on loan. Sverre Nypan, the 18-year-old who joined from Rosenborg for £12.5million, will go out on loan as part of a development plan but a prospective move to Ajax is thought to no longer be on the cards. La Liga club Girona, part of the CFG network, are keen on loaning Vitor Reis and Claudio Echeverri. A year in Spain represents a good development opportunity for Reis, who is 19 and joined the club in January from Palmeiras for £29.5million. He is highly rated internally but showed in his second start for City against Wydad at the Club World Cup that there are parts of his game that need work. Echeverri is also 19 but represents a different case. Guardiola is a huge admirer and saw fit to bring Echeverri on for his debut in the FA Cup final just months after arriving from Argentina. Girona would love to have him, while Roma have made a case for a year in Italy, but City are deliberating whether it would be better to keep him in-house to learn from the manager and other forwards such as Erling Haaland and Omar Marmoush. Oscar Bobb is very likely to stay, with the 22-year-old winger impressing Guardiola last summer before a fractured leg ruined his season. Advertisement Nico O'Reilly faces a fight for minutes due to the arrival of Ait-Nouri at left-back, where he impressed last season. The plan is for O'Reilly, 20, to stay, as he can also operate in his more natural midfielder role. McAtee is more established but his role last season was largely restricted to substitute cameos. Nottingham Forest have been discussing a fee of around £25million for him but Viana wants more. Eintracht Frankfurt, who McAtee visited last month, view these sums as out of their league. In defence, City are overstocked, with 10 players across the back four, leading to speculation that one or two could depart. John Stones was not given a single minute at the Club World Cup despite fully recovering from an injury-ravaged season. The England centre-back, who has a year left on his deal, said during the Club World Cup that he did not want to leave and there is no prospect of him departing this summer. Manuel Akanji and Abdukodir Khusanov are two others with a point to prove. Khusanov, 21, barely featured in the final few months of the season after joining from Nice in January, but no approaches have been made. In midfield, there is an argument that City are also overstocked. It remains to be seen how quickly Rodri can regain form after his anterior cruciate ligament injury, so the cover provided by Nico Gonzalez and Mateo Kovacic could be important. Tijjani Reijnders can also drop back to play as the deeper No 6. Premier League clubs will have to register their official 25-man squad after the transfer window closes on September 1. They can only name a maximum of 17 non-homegrown senior players, with the rest of the squad comprising 'homegrown players' — those who have trained at an English club for three seasons (or 36) months between the ages of 15 and 21, regardless of nationality. Advertisement City have 17 non-homegrown players above the age of 21 and nine homegrown players above the age of 21. That is only one too many, a situation aided by the Premier League rule that dictates under-21 players, those born after January 1, 2004, do not take up spaces in the 25-man squad. Rico Lewis, Khusanov, Reis, O'Reilly, Savinho and Echeverri all fall into that category, although 22-year-old Bobb becomes a senior homegrown player for the first time. There are different rules in the Champions League, so if City do not loan or sell anyone else, they would have to leave four non-homegrown players out in the cold. UEFA's 'A list' does not offer the same blanket exclusion for under-21 players. They have to be under-21 and homegrown, which means Khusanov, Reis, Savinho and Echeverri all require a space, unlike in the Premier League. Eight spaces are exclusively reserved for locally trained players, with no more than four of that total made up of association-trained players reared at other English clubs. Even if Grealish, Phillips and McAtee all leave, that will not be an issue for City, with Trafford, O'Reilly, Lewis, Bobb and Foden all club-trained, and Betinelli, Stones and Ake all association-trained. It is another reason the two goalkeepers were recruited this summer. The risk of carrying such a bloated squad is not just regulatory, however. It is a matter of identity and contentment, too. Players at this level possess egos and pride. They want to contribute and feel like a valued member of the squad but it is difficult to achieve across an entire squad, with so many players being reduced to a spectator role. City were quick out of the blocks this window but they need to start getting a shift on if they are to satisfy Guardiola's demand for an optimised squad.


New York Times
2 minutes ago
- New York Times
#FreeWissa, footballers wanting out and why fans have every right to defy logic
If you're still in thrall to beleaguered social media platform X, as many of us regrettably are, take a minute to click on the hashtag #FreeWissa. You'll be disappointed if you're expecting lots of giddy Newcastle United fans, seriously demanding that Yoane Wissa should be liberated from his current club Brentford, allowing him to fulfil his true destiny at St James' Park. It mostly seems to be bots and fans of other clubs, trying to whip up a bit of animosity, but it does highlight a rather curious situation in the north east of England. Advertisement Wissa withdrew from Brentford's pre-season training camp in Portugal in an attempt to force through a move to Newcastle. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Basque Country, Alexander Isak is training at his former club Real Sociedad's facilities, having not travelled with Newcastle on their pre-season tour to East Asia. Isak is trying to engineer change too — in his case, a move from St James' to Liverpool. Here we have two players, both unwilling to fully engage with their current employers and training away as they try to either leave or join Newcastle. It feels like a low-wattage version of those prisoner exchanges in Berlin during the Cold War, two men standing at either end of a bridge, desperate to reach the other side but not able to move until they are given the nod. There is a surface-level inconsistency at play here. You have a club benefiting from, shall we say, forceful tactics from a player trying to push through a transfer, and the same club suffering because of another player doing the same thing. Many Newcastle fans will recognise that this is the game, that there is a food chain and they are towards the top, but not at the top, so there will always be situations like this. But look around and you will find enough people earnestly explaining how the two situations are quite different, actually, with one player justified and the other very much not. This isn't confined to Newcastle. Nottingham Forest clutched their collective pearls about Morgan Gibbs-White, Tottenham Hotspur and his secret release clause, but you can bet there would have been few complaints had they needed to source a replacement through similar methods. Trent Alexander-Arnold received much opprobrium for running his contract down and leaving Liverpool for nothing to join Real Madrid, but they will be the ones to benefit from Isak's manoeuvrings. You can imagine the scenes if, say, Bukayo Saka went on strike if he wanted to leave Arsenal, whose fans would forget how Viktor Gyokeres arrived from Sporting CP. We could go on. But the thing is, in the context of football fandom, there's nothing wrong with any of this. Nothing wrong with the apparent moral and logical inconsistency, even hypocrisy. Nothing wrong with fans being happy when they're benefitting from nefarious tactics but angry when they suffer due to the same. Advertisement Very little of being a football fan is logical. Fandom, even beyond the confines of football, is a place where you can live on emotions, and you don't have to always live by the rules of the real world. How dull it would be if a fan in the stands reacted to an adverse refereeing decision not by howling at the injustice of it all, but quietly remarking, 'Well, they do have a very difficult job, and I suppose it could have been a foul…' The thing is, lots of people who say they are 'football fans' aren't really football fans, in the macro sense at least. They're fans of their team, which is a slightly different thing. There are some people who genuinely do watch Bundesliga games on Friday nights, La Liga on Saturday evenings, the Premier League on Sunday afternoons, then settle in for some Serie A to round off the weekend. There are some who do have a broad appreciation of the game beyond their personal sphere, and approach everything with logic and consistency. There are also some, mostly young fans, who don't have a team and will follow a particular player, shifting their allegiance from club to club as their hero moves through their career. But for the most part, people just want to watch a few big games, take a passing interest in everything else, read a few articles, maybe play a little Fantasy Premier League — but mainly just support their club. Therefore, the rest of football is viewed through that prism, all points of view filtered through what it means for that club. The wider game is, at best, a secondary concern, without logical and intellectual consistency coming into it. Which, again, is absolutely fine. It's fine — desirable, even — for football fans to be illogical. Tribalism, to a point, can be good. You could argue that engaging in a little light hypocrisy is a relatively healthy way of channelling the emotions that come from such an illogical state. Tribalism can and does spill over into much more unpleasant areas, from basic name-calling to more insidious abuse. So if that's expressed via some relatively harmless double standards when it comes to transfers, then it's not that big of a problem. The Wissa and Isak situations are a little messy, undignified and ideally, they'll be solved soon — but as fans react, let's not expect consistency, and embrace the contradictions. (Top photos: Getty Images)