Manchester City simply cannot wait for this season to end.
On Tuesday night, despite leading 2-1 with less than five minutes to play, the Sky Blues were beaten 3-2 by Real Madrid in the Champions League at the Etihad, Jude Bellingham’s winner coming deep into stoppage time.
This leaves the Citizens on the brink of elimination from Europe, while they’re currently down in fifth in the Premier League table, ahead of Saturday’s huge clash with Newcastle, leaving the FA Cup as their only hope of avoiding a trophyless season, with Plymouth Argyle, who’ve just dumped out Liverpool, their fifth round opponents.
So, with this campaign having been, as Zak Garner-Purkis of Forbes puts it, a “disaster”, will Pep Guardiola, who signed a new two-year contract extension back in November of course, start to look towards the future?
Man City's push for youth
As noted by Jamie Jackson of the Guardian, Man City currently have an ‘ageing squad’, which Guardiola insists is not the primary reason behind their poor campaign, but there was a clear strategy to get younger in the January transfer window.
Players
Age
Fee
Selling club
Abdukodir Khusanov
20
£34m
RC Lens
Vitor Reis
19
£30m
Palmeiras
Omar Marmoush
26
£59m
Eintracht Frankfurt
Juma Bah
18
£5.1m
Real Valladolid
Nico González
23
£50m
FC Porto
As the table shows, Man City signed two teenagers, a 20-year-old and a 23-year-old in January, Omar Marmoush the slight outlier at 26, but they are clearly looking to the future, underlined by the fact that Juma Bah, snapped up from Real Valladolid, having paid his €6m (£5m) release clause, was immediately loaned out to Lens.
On the flip side, 34-year-old Kyle Walker was allowed to join AC Milan on loan, while Kevin De Bruyne and İlkay Gündoğan, who are 33 and 34 respectively, could depart at the end of the season as their contracts expire; Ederson, Stefan Ortega, John Stones and Bernardo Silva, all of whom are aged 30+, are out of contract the following summer.
Thus, the four-in-a-row Premier League champions could look rather different in the coming months and years, so could an exciting 18-year-old, who has also just joined the club, but we’re yet to mention, break into the first team?
Man City's future left-back
Given Man City’s January transfer spree, spending more than the other 19 Premier League clubs combined, one move rather went under the radar, this being the arrival of Christian McFarlane from MLS side New York City, one of the many other clubs owned by City Football Group.
In The Pipeline
Born in Basildon in Essex, McFarlane moved to the United States at the age of three, joining NYCFC’s academy as an 11-year-old, progressing through the ranks, featuring for the MLS Next Pro team before making his senior debut last year.
He came off the bench in June against Columbus Crew at Yankee Stadium, prior to starting for the first time when the boys in blue faced Querétaro in the Leagues Cup a month later.
Back in 2021, he became the third-youngest player in Major League Soccer history to sign a professional contract, doing so at the age of 14, and despite departing having made just 13 senior appearances, he has earned rave reviews.
Tom Bogert and Sam Lee of the Athletic labelled him a “highly-rated…top talent”, with Manuel Veth of Transfermarkt reporting that Brighton, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund all “showed interest” before his move to Manchester.
NYCFC sporting director David Lee expects him to “surprise people”, considering he has been training with the first team since he was “15 years old”, while his former MLS Next Pro manager Matt Pilkington believes “his ability to adapt to the level… sets him apart”.
Writing in the Guardian’s Next Generation of 2024 series, Oliver Connolly describes McFarlane as a “flying left-back”, adding he is “intelligent, quick and a solid defender in one-on-one situations”.
McFarlane featured in a Man City shirt for the first time on Wednesday, coming on for the final 13 minutes of a UEFA Youth League tie against Midtjylland, which his team won on penalties, the debutant converting from 12 yards during the shootout, so he’ll be hoping to see more action when the Sky Blues take on Hoffenheim in the round of 16 next month.
As noted by Jacob Schneider of Goal, McFarlane was the second-fastest player in MLS in 2024, and the sixth fastest of all 633,000+ players in the entire Wyscout database for the calendar year, “even surpassing Kylian Mbappé”, hence why the young dual-national, English-American could be Man City’s left-sided Walker in the future.
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1 ByBen GrayFeb 14, 2025