Manchester City reportedly have an Englishman with 14 direct goal contributions this season in their sights to replace iconic midfielder Kevin De Bruyne.
Six-time Premier League winner De Bruyne revealed on Friday that he’ll be leaving City at the end of the season. Beyond his impressive trophy haul, which also includes a Champions League and two FA Cups, the Belgian has 182 direct goal contributions to his name in a City shirt.
His boots will be hard to fill, but City are hoping they’ll be able to do just that. According to transfer insider David Ornstein, writing for The Athletic, Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White is among the options.
The Englishman, with five goals and nine assists for third-placed Forest in the Premier League this season – better numbers than De Bruyne but from more games – is said to feature in ‘deliberations’ alongside Florian Wirtz.
Reports of interest from City in the German playmaker have been rife in the past few months. It has previously been suggested that whether or not De Bruyne was to leave, the Premier League champions would go after Wirtz.
Ornstein suggests he’s valued at €150million (£128m) by Bayer Leverkusen, who are hoping to tie him down to a new deal.
In any case, City will soon begin to make pushes for new signings, with new director of football Hugo Viana starting his role this week. The report states they do not intend to prioritise transfer targets until he gets ‘fully under way’.
With his role starting now, though, it’s not likely it will be long before they start their push for new talent.
City may have to wait a little bit longer until they know about one of their targets, though. Indeed, a recent TBRFootball report stated the Premier League giants were ‘waiting on Wirtz’s decision on his future’.
As soon as they get the green light to go on the attack, it seems they’ll be happy to do that, but currently, there are other options in case that doesn’t happen.
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