Arsenal could attempt to beat Man City to the signing of Nottingham Forest attacking midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White this summer, according to reports.
Man City have had a terrible season in the Premier League by their standards with the Citizens currently third in the standings heading into their final match of the season on Sunday.
The Citizens have failed to win a major trophy for the first time since 2017 with Pep Guardiola facing a bit of a rebuild in the summer transfer window.
Man City signed Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis and Juma Bah in the January transfer window after it became clear that they weren’t going to challenge of the title.
But Guardiola sent a clear warning to the Man City hierarchy earlier this week that he won’t tolerate a huge squad for next season and trimming of some players could be necessary.
Guardiola said after they beat Bournemouth in midweek: “I said to the club, ‘I don’t want that’, I don’t want to put five, six players in the tribune, I don’t want that. I will quit. If they don’t make a short squad, I will not stay.
“It’s impossible for my soul to put the players in the tribune and cannot play. Now it happened because we added four players… maybe three or four months we could not select eleven players, we didn’t have defenders, it was so difficult. After people came back and next season it cannot be like that.
“As a manager, I cannot be training 24 players and every time I select there has to be four, five, six staying in Manchester at home because they can’t play.
“This isn’t going to happen. This is not going to happen – I said to the club I don’t want that.
“I do not want to have 24, 25, 26 players and when everybody’s fit… if I have injuries, unlucky.
“We have some players in the academy, we do it but we cannot sustain for the emotional, for the soul of the team, I couldn’t create another connection between each other.
“This season we lost it a little bit, but with the players like they know week by week [if] they stay at home. They have to be here to fight between them to play, there has to be the right number, if there are a lot of injuries… unlucky. But we have to do it.”
Man City have already pulled out of the race to sign Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen, who is now likely to move to Liverpool, and now Football Insider claim that the Citizens ‘now face competition from Arsenal in their bid to sign’ Gibbs-White from Nottingham Forest.
After missing out on Wirtz, senior correspondent Pete O’Rourke told Football Insider: “They will be looking at alternatives for that attacking midfielder, a playmaker who can come in and improve City’s fortune next season.
“Gibbs-White has been a long-term target, they have been keeping regular tabs on him this season.
“[Forest] could face a real battle to keep hold of him because Gibbs-White, he’s 25 now and has broken into the England squad.
“He’ll be looking to play at the highest level possible – in the Champions League – and that’s something that Arsenal could potentially offer to him.”
Jack Grealish, who is set to be left out of Man City’s squad for the final day of the Premier League season, is now ‘almost guaranteed’ to leave the Etihad Stadium in the summer, according to transfer expert Fabrizio Romano.
Romano wrote on X: ‘Jack Grealish, not in Man City squad for the final game of the PL season — reports @mcgrathmike. Feeling at Manchester City is that his exit in the summer transfer window is almost guaranteed, looking for solutions.’