Manuel Akanji, a 30-year-old treble winner with Manchester City, completed a Deadline Day loan to join Cristian Chivu at Inter Milan. The Switzerland centre back says a clear message from Pep Guardiola over the summer played a decisive role in his decision to leave on loan.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe made it clear to us six central defenders that two would play and two would be on the bench. And that it would be difficult for the rest. That wasn\u2019t nice to hear, because I always expect to be on the pitch,\u201d Akanji said in a press conference during international duty.<\/p>\n
Asked why he fell out of favour, the defender gave a brief reply: \u201cYou\u2019ll have to ask him,\u201d when questioned on why he fell out of favour. Akanji had been named in two of Manchester City\u2019s first three matchday squads this term but did not manage to get off the bench. Guardiola has instead favoured a mixture of Abdukodir Khusanov, John Stones, Nathan Ak\u00e9 and R\u00faben Dias.<\/p>\n
Akanji remains under contract at City until 2027 and did not rule out a future return to the club. He also stressed that, despite the positive feeling around his move to Inter, he and his family were comfortable in the North West of England.<\/p>\n
During Manchester City\u2019s treble-winning campaign in 2022\u201323, Akanji made 29 Premier League appearances, primarily as a centre back. He was used infrequently on the flanks and was a starter in the Champions League final in which the Sky Blues defeated Akanji\u2019s new club.<\/p>\n
Now with Inter, the Swiss defender will aim to make his first appearance after the international break. A challenging derby against Juventus is scheduled for next Saturday in Turin, providing an early test for his loan spell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Akanji says Guardiola told six centre backs only two would play, prompting his Deadline Day loan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,172],"tags":[936],"class_list":["post-2548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-manuel-akanji"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}