Update: |Txiki Begiristain needs £50m Man City gamble to pay off after ‘awful’ summer News

Txiki Begiristain has got it wrong with his last two substantial midfield signings at Manchester City, so how will the third go down?

To steal from a phrase already stolen from too much, it’s the midfield stupid. Football can be an exceptionally complicated game but if you have the best midfield generally you have the best chance of winning the Premier League.

It’s what separated Manchester City from Liverpool between 2017 and 2019, and where Pep Guardiola’s side then fell down the following year as Rodri struggled to succeed Fernandinho with no support behind or in front of him. As the Spaniard improved, so did City and there came another four league titles before this season’s collapse.

Despite the success, there have been concerns over City’s midfield for years. Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain agreed that cover for Rodri was needed once Fernandinho left in 2022, but while Kalvin Phillips initially seemed like a good signing it never worked out.

Phillips just didn’t look comfortable playing Guardiola’s football, and as nice as the manager was about his player – apart from calling him out for returning from a break overweight after the 2022 World Cup – the compliments never extended to his football. Comments about him struggling when City had the ball, or when he couldn’t see everything in front of him, were damning of a £45m signing that was supposed to keep improving the Blues.

City knew before the end of his first year that Phillips wasn’t up for it, but at the same time in that season they won the Treble. What followed was a summer transfer window that Txiki Begiristain described as ‘awful’.

“The transfer window was a bit awful – at least for me,” he said. “After winning the Treble, everyone was confused.

“The protagonists from those trophies were thinking they should get more or new contracts and take the opportunities, and the ones who didn’t play in finals were p***** off and trying to get out from the club.”

That feeling showed in what stands out as one of the most confusing windows in Begiristain’s time with Guardiola. City tabled a £90m bid for Declan Rice in response to Arsenal trying to buy him, but would not match the Gunners when the fee went north of £100m.

Then there was a lot of effort put into West Ham’s Lucas Paqueta, only for an FA betting investigation to put the brakes on that move. In the final week of the window, they pushed through a £51m deal for Matheus Nunes with the Jorge Mendes client going on strike at Wolves in order to push a move through.

A lot of fuss, and very little return again. Nunes barely played in his first year and the majority of his appearances this season have come at full-back, including on Sunday in the Manchester derby where Guardiola again came up with some brutal comments.

“He can become a good right-back for the physicality,” he said. “He’s not a player to play in the middle because he’s not clever enough with composure. He has incredible skills, he’s learning a lot.”

There’s a chance that Guardiola was talking about centre-back rather than central midfield – the position he played at Wolves which he considers his strongest – but you only have to take a look at his appearances to see that the manager doesn’t fancy him there. He has played left-back and right-back way more often than central midfield this season.

With two failed attempts to replace Fernandinho and provide adequate help for Rodri, a lot rests on the shoulders of £50m January arrival Nico Gonzalez. The former Porto midfielder gave a masterclass against Newcastle in February but has not hit those heights again and has curiously been on the bench for the recent matches against Bournemouth and United.

Hugo Viana is now in the building at the City Football Academy and will be responsible for leading the team into their next era under Guardiola, but how successful Gonzalez is as a signing could go a long way to deciding that.

If Begiristain can get it right at the third time of asking, he can happily sign off on a high.