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Manchester City continued their pre-season preparations with a 3-2 defeat by AC Milan at the Yankee Stadium in New York.
City had taken the lead through Erling Haaland but Lorenzo Colombo replied with two goals at the back post before half-time. The game appeared to be meandering to a close after James McAtee scored a fine header from Micah Hamilton’s driving run and cross but Marco Nasti squeezed in a low effort late on.
It is City’s second defeat of the summer so far, no doubt due to the absence of the vast majority of their big names. But that does at least provide opportunities for others, and here The Athletic looks at the big talking points from their latest warm-up game.
Is Bobb on track for more minutes this season?
Due to the fact many of City’s senior players are only going to start their pre-season either the week before or even after the Community Shield, first-team places will clearly be up for grabs in the opening weeks of the season. That is something Oscar Bobb may well be able to take advantage of and so far in pre-season he has probably been City’s most eye-catching player.
He himself felt his overall game was not the best against Celtic on Tuesday but he did get a goal and two assists, and he set up another for Haaland in New York on Saturday evening.
In truth, he should have had a goal himself, or at least another assist by squaring the ball for an easy tap-in, but he chose to go alone after doing brilliantly to create the chance in the first place, only to shoot wide, shortly before Milan made it 2-1.
But his dribbling, in particular, has been a bright spot for City early in their preparations and while there is a lot of competition on the right wing, with Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden and new signing Savinho on the scene, they will be playing catch-up at the start of the season. Bobb did well when given opportunities in 2023-24 and he seems ready to build on that.
Do City need to sign a Rodri back-up?
Pep Guardiola has said there may not be any new signings at City this summer, and that if there are any then it will probably be as a replacement for anybody who leaves.
That has one big implication: they might not sign a midfielder who can lighten Rodri’s workload by coming in and dropping into the holding role when the Spaniard is not available or in need of a rest — and he has been saying he needs one for over a year.
Rodri is arguably the most important player in Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City system (Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)
City do recognise the issue but are sticking to their valuation of main target Bruno Guimaraes, meaning right now they are planning for the squad to look more or less as it did last season, despite having no profit and sustainability rules issues.
In recent seasons they have been of the opinion that the best way to replace Rodri is to use two deep-lying midfielders — which was similar to how they went about it in New York, with Nico O’Reilly the deepest but with support from Maximo Perrone — but there is no doubt they do not look the same without their main man (they lost three of the four league matches he missed last season).
That is obviously a big concern going into the season.
A difficult day for Ederson
With little incoming transfer activity, the spotlight has been on Ederson’s future recently, with Guardiola saying twice this week he is desperate for him to stay.
“I hope from the bottom of my heart,” as he put it on Friday.
The Brazilian has wanted to move and City recognised that, but have priced him at around £50m ($64.4m) and it does not appear his keenest suitors in Saudi Arabia are going to pay it, and so therefore he seems set to stay at City.
He will be in the headlines after this performance after letting in three soft goals, although at least they were of little importance, even if Guardiola showed his disappointment at the third, as he prepared to send Scott Carson on for a rare outing.
First there was uncertainty over Stefan Ortega’s future, but he signed a new deal in June, and now with Ederson appearing likely to stay and the morale-boosting Carson also signed on for another year, City’s goalkeeping contingent will remain the same heading into the season. It is a strong unit.
What next for Manchester City?
Tuesday, July 30: Barcelona (Orlando, Florida), 7pm ET, midnight BST
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(Top photo: Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)
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Courtesy : https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5659073/2024/07/27/manchester-city-ac-milan-friendly/