Will Manchester City make one more statement signing before the Premier League season begins?
Already this summer, the recently dethroned champions have spent big on five new recruits, with James Trafford, Rayan Aït-Nouri, Rayan Cherki, Tijjani Reijnders and Sverre Nypan costing, in excess of, £155m combined.
This is on top of the almost £200m Pep Guardiola spent in January to bring Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov, Nico González, Juma Bah and Vitor Reis to the Etihad as recently as January.
Now though, with the Citizens’ one and only pre-season friendly coming up against Palermo, another club owned by the City Football Group, at Stadio Renzo Barbera on Saturday night, will they make the third-most expensive signing in club history, behind only Jack Grealish and Joško Gvardiol?
Manchester City targeting a new attacker
Of course, Manchester City do boast the goalbot himself, Erling Braut Håland, but one of their issues last season was that no one else was chipping in with enough goals, as the table below documents.
Erling Braut Håland
4,041
22
34
Phil Foden
2,994
7
13
Jérémy Doku
2,232
3
8
Omar Marmoush
1,700*
7
8
James McAtee
936
3
7
Mateo Kovačić
2,834
6
7
Bernardo Silva
4,171
4
7
*joined in January.
As the table outlines, Håland was the only Man City player to reach double figures in terms of Premier League goals last season.
21 players across the entire division achieved this, with Brighton, Brentford, Chelsea, Liverpool, Bournemouth and Wolves all seeing multiple players do so.
The output of Jérémy Doku in particular has been a disappointment, scoring just 14 goals in 84 appearances for the Sky Blues since arriving from Rennes for a reported fee of £55.5m two summers ago.
Thus, as they target an upgrade, reports in Spain claim that Manchester City are preparing an €100m (around £87m) bid to sign Rafael Leão from AC Milan, noting that he would ‘add an extra dose of explosiveness’ to Guardiola’s forward options.
Florian Plettenberg of Sky Sports Deutschland has previously reported that Leão has “informed” Milan of his desire to leave this summer, following I Rossoneri’s eighth-place finish in Serie A last season, thereby failing to qualify for any European competition.
A few months ago, Bayern Munich were purportedly the front-runners to sign the Portuguese international but, following Luis Díaz’s move to Bavaria, that’s now off the table, so could Leão swap Milan for Manchester?
What Rafael Leão would bring to Manchester City
Now 26 years old, Leão has been highly-rated for many years, moving to Milan from Lille back in 2019, winning the Scudetto in 2020/21, scoring 70 goals and registering 62 assists in 260 appearances for Il Diavolo overall.
Analyst Ben Mattinson asserts that he is a “world-class” game changer, adding that Leão is an “elite forward”, while James Cormack of Sports Illustrated agrees, describing him as a ‘superstar talent’ who is on the cusp of superstardom, noting that he is ‘absolutely electrifying’ when in full flight.
Meantime, Christopher Winter of Total Football Analysis documents how he is ‘equally as effective’ when attacking both out-wide and when drifting inside, able to occupy an entire left-flank by himself.
Aaron Barton of Opta’s the Analyst agrees, labelling him ‘direct, aggressive and skilful’, citing teammate Alexis Saelemaekers, who asserted that Leão “can win the Ballon d’Or”.
So would he represent an upgrade on Doku? Let’s crunch the numbers to find out.
Appearances
97
84
Minutes
7,047
4,403
Goals
27
14
Assists
27
20
Shots on target %
40.5%
35%
Progressive carries per 90
5.24
12
Take on success %
47.7%
52.4%
Goal-creating actions per 90
0.70
0.74
Big chances missed
19
3
Big chances created
37
17
Average SofaScore rating
7.4
7.3
As the table documents, even with the caveat that he has played significantly more minutes across the last two seasons, Leão is clearly more productive than Doku.
The Portuguese winger scored more goals and registered more assists, while a higher proportion of his shots found the target and he created more than twice as many Opta-defined big chances.
Doku remains the progressive carries king, ranked top for this metric across Europe’s top five leagues in both of the last two seasons, according to FBref.com, but with little output.
Thus, if Man City can get Leão on board, even if such a deal would cost a huge amount of money, he could be the man to elevate them back to Premier League supremacy.
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