Pep Guardiola threatens to quit Manchester City over transfer plans | OneFootball

Manchester City bosses have been hit by a threat from manager Pep Guardiola over their recruitment plans and the squad they are plotting to put together next season.

The message from the Catalan tactician comes at a time when the likes of Hugo Viana and Txiki Begiristain are plotting the next generation and version of Manchester City’s playing squad off the back of a difficult campaign.

Work on the next phase began during the January transfer window, when City’s concerns over not qualifying for the UEFA Champions League forced a big-money drive in the market bringing in four news players at a cost of over £170 million.

But with injured players returning and others coming back to form, having the full squad at its best compliment in the final weeks of the season has meant Pep Guardiola has been left with hugely difficult decisions over which names to leave out of his matchday squads entirely.

The FA Cup Final remarkably saw the likes of Rico Lewis and James McAtee miss out despite the heroics for the club throughout the tournament, while the latest Premier League encounter saw that pairing plus Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis, Savinho and more absent.

Speaking to reporters after Manchester City’s vital 3-1 win over Bournemouth, Pep Guardiola revealed the warning he has sent club officials over the squad they are planning to put together for the forthcoming 2025/26 campaign.

“I said to the club, ‘I don’t want that!’ I don’t want to put five, six players in the tribune, I don’t want that. I will quit. If they don’t make a short squad, I will not stay,” Guardiola admitted.

“It’s impossible for my soul to put players in the tribune and cannot play. Now it happened because we added four players… Three or four months we could not select 11 players; we didn’t have defenders, so difficult.”

The Manchester City boss added, “After people came back and next season it cannot be like that. As a manager, I cannot be training 24 players and when I select there has to be four, five, six staying in Manchester at home because they can’t play. This isn’t going to happen. I said to the club I don’t want that.”

The Catalan coach has stressed that with the fact he would have a slimmer squad, he would be accepting of injuries hampering progress once again, and ready to turn to youth squad members, as was the case at various times this season.

“I don’t want to have 24, 25, 26 players when everyone is fit. If I have injuries, unlucky! We will have some players from the Academy and we will do it. But I cannot sustain for the emotional, the soul of the team,” said Guardiola.

He continued, “We have to create another connection between eachother that this season we lost a little bit, with the players knowing that week by week they stay at home.

“Players have to be here to fight between them to play, and they have to be the right number. A lot of injuries? Unlucky! But we have to do it.”

“It’s a headache! Yesterday I spent more than 45 minutes [thinking] which SIX players would be at home! I don’t like that.”

Manchester City expected to bring in up to four new names in the summer, according to recent reports, with new full-backs being identified as well as two central players to bolster the ranks, including the role left behind by Kevin De Bruyne’s pending exit.

Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White and AC Milan’s Tijjani Reijnders are both on the radar of the club, while that could yet raise questions over the futures of the likes of Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, and possibly Mateo Kovacic due to age.