Barcelona are eyeing a move for Manchester City defender Aymeric Laporte, according to Sergi Solé of Mundo Deportivo.
Barcelona Eyeing Manchester City Defender Aymeric Laporte
Manchester City’s European Football ban Putting Players’ Futures into Uncertainty
Since City’s UEFA ban, there have been rumours of many of their players’ departure. They will not be able to compete in the Champions League or Europa League, and with European football a major attraction for top players, this could be catastrophic for the Sky Blues. David Beckham’s Inter Miami reportedly want David Silva, who is out of contract at the end of the season, and Laporte has become another player who’s Manchester City future is in jeopardy.
Manchester City’s Defensive Issues
Manchester City have had many defensive issues this season. Arguably the worst of their defenders who are still playing regularly is Nicolás Otamendi. He has appeared 19 times in the league this season but has embarrassed himself a more than ideal amount of times. One of these came in a 2-0 defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers in late 2019.
Having played out the majority of an intriguing game, with City even having hit the bar from a free-kick, it was still 0-0. Then, Wolves had a counter-attack.
Their pace, notably Adama Traoré, made it challenging to deal with, however, Otamendi had a fairly favourable position. Despite this, the Argentinian went in for a slide tackle, but missed the ball completely, allowing the opposition through to score the opening goal of the game.
Laporte has been injured for a large part of the season, adding to City’s defensive troubles. During his four-month absence from September to January, they kept just five clean sheets in the league, and the absence of John Stones for some of this time did not help. For comparison, Liverpool kept this amount of clean sheets in less than a month during December and January.
Losing Laporte to Barcelona would be very challenging for Manchester City, and they would need to replace him, potentially bringing in two new centre-backs to fix their troubles in that position.
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