Marvin.
Well-Known Member
To complement the topic: Post-KDB Era: Who Will Be City’s Standout Player in 2025/26, I wondered which City player has the highest potential to improve City?
Maths provides us with the derivative to quantify how an output changes in response to changes In an input. We can qualitatively apply that approach to City. Last season was disappointing. It was the final season for 2 great players: KDB and Walker, furthermore the season was scarred by injury to Stones and Rodri. In looking at the prospects for the new season, we might ask which players has the highest capacity to improve Manchester City? The answer is obvious: Rodri and to a lesser extent Stones, because they are both world class players whose seasons were curtailed by injury. This means that City fans should be hopeful for the new season but also worried about their fitness but who else has a high potential to improve City? In 2024-25, the most improved player was Nunes. Excluding Stones and Rodri, who might that be this season?
The players:
O'Reilly. He made a season-changing impact on City at left-back, and yet we are told that he is an attacking midfielder. Ait-Nouri will likely displace him from left-back but if he is free to play in midfield, I think he has the potential to score goals. KDB and Foden used to be goal-scoring midfielders. Every successful side needs such a player. That means Foden can be so again.
Ait-Nouri, Cherki and Reijnders were signed to improve City. Likewise in January we brought in Khusanov and Marmoush who both might be expected to improve still further.
The 2 most interesting players I think are Doku and Savinho. Doku is a tremendously exciting player who has the highest number of successful take-ons per minutes played in European football, but in 2024-25 he produced only 3 goals and 6 assists from 16 starts and 13 substitute appearances. A wide forward has to produce more than that. In 2019/20 Sterling scored 20 league goals for City. If you look at Liverpool, they had Diaz who scored 13 goals from out wide. This is clearly an area where we are underperforming so much so that Pep dropped 1, or both wingers entirely last season, and used O'Reilly and Nunes as full-backs to provide our width. Savinho scored 9 goals in La Liga for Girona and firing them into the Champions League. He showed some flair but was very unproductive for City, he might be expected to improve significantly this season.
By the same token you might consider risk. Last season it was predicable that Walker and KDB would decline. Do we have any players whose game might be expected to dip? That is an age-related question. I don't think we do. That is another reason to be hopeful. If you consider our rivals, then Liverpool might experience a big fall in contributions from Salah and Van Dijk but they have countered that by making new signings.
To answer my own question. my candidates are Foden and Doku. Doku would be a genuine breakout whereas Foden is a player who should still have it.
Maths provides us with the derivative to quantify how an output changes in response to changes In an input. We can qualitatively apply that approach to City. Last season was disappointing. It was the final season for 2 great players: KDB and Walker, furthermore the season was scarred by injury to Stones and Rodri. In looking at the prospects for the new season, we might ask which players has the highest capacity to improve Manchester City? The answer is obvious: Rodri and to a lesser extent Stones, because they are both world class players whose seasons were curtailed by injury. This means that City fans should be hopeful for the new season but also worried about their fitness but who else has a high potential to improve City? In 2024-25, the most improved player was Nunes. Excluding Stones and Rodri, who might that be this season?
The players:
O'Reilly. He made a season-changing impact on City at left-back, and yet we are told that he is an attacking midfielder. Ait-Nouri will likely displace him from left-back but if he is free to play in midfield, I think he has the potential to score goals. KDB and Foden used to be goal-scoring midfielders. Every successful side needs such a player. That means Foden can be so again.
Ait-Nouri, Cherki and Reijnders were signed to improve City. Likewise in January we brought in Khusanov and Marmoush who both might be expected to improve still further.
The 2 most interesting players I think are Doku and Savinho. Doku is a tremendously exciting player who has the highest number of successful take-ons per minutes played in European football, but in 2024-25 he produced only 3 goals and 6 assists from 16 starts and 13 substitute appearances. A wide forward has to produce more than that. In 2019/20 Sterling scored 20 league goals for City. If you look at Liverpool, they had Diaz who scored 13 goals from out wide. This is clearly an area where we are underperforming so much so that Pep dropped 1, or both wingers entirely last season, and used O'Reilly and Nunes as full-backs to provide our width. Savinho scored 9 goals in La Liga for Girona and firing them into the Champions League. He showed some flair but was very unproductive for City, he might be expected to improve significantly this season.
By the same token you might consider risk. Last season it was predicable that Walker and KDB would decline. Do we have any players whose game might be expected to dip? That is an age-related question. I don't think we do. That is another reason to be hopeful. If you consider our rivals, then Liverpool might experience a big fall in contributions from Salah and Van Dijk but they have countered that by making new signings.
To answer my own question. my candidates are Foden and Doku. Doku would be a genuine breakout whereas Foden is a player who should still have it.