Ever since he came from VfL Wolfsburg in the summer of 2015, Kevin De Bruyne has been the heartbeat of a Manchester City squad that have won the English Premier League (EPL) six times since Pep Guardiola took charge a year after the Belgian playmaker arrived at the Etihad. But with the club not renewing his contract and De Bruyne looking at pastures new, it is a time of change at City, who will aim to bounce back from what has been a terrible season by their standards.
The transition feel is there off the pitch too, with Hugo Viana poised to take over from the long-serving Txiki Begiristain as the Director of Football. Viana’s first major task will be to replace the irreplaceable. For a decade, De Bruyne didn’t just score spectacular goals, he was a virtual assists machine.
Who can fill the void? The grapevine suggests that City are looking most closely at Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz, a creator and scorer of chances so outrageously gifted that any bid of less than $125 million is likely to be laughed out of the room. Bayern too want Wirtz, who helped Leverkusen to their first title last season, and it would be a surprise if the Spanish giants too didn’t show some interest.
The other obvious candidate is Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White, a star of the side sitting in an unexpected third place in the EPL. Gibbs-White, who came through the ranks at Wolves, has five goals and nine assists this season, and it will take a sizeable bid for Forest to even consider selling.
Morgan Rogers, recently setting the midfield alight for Aston Villa, was on City’s books for four years without playing a game, and would cost at least $70 million to buy back. Similar sums have been mentioned in connection with Crystal Palace’s in-form Eberechi Eze. The left-field option might be the extravagantly gifted Rayan Cherki, whose Lyon team are locked in a four-way tussle for second place in Ligue 1 behind Paris Saint-Germain.
One thing is certain. Regardless of whether Viana and Guardiola opt to promote from within – perhaps using Phil Foden or Jack Grealish as a No. 10 – or splash the cash to get a replacement, the man coming in will have impossibly large boots to fill.
