Marc Gu\u00e9hi has said conversations with John Stones and Phil Foden were decisive in his decision to move to Manchester City now rather than wait to become a free agent and potentially join Liverpool. City had the option to delay signing Gu\u00e9hi until his Crystal Palace contract expired, a route that would likely have reopened interest from Liverpool after a September deal collapsed. Bayern Munich and Real Madrid were also linked as potential suitors.<\/p>\n
The move was brought forward by an immediate need at the Etihad. Stones, R\u00faben Dias and Jo\u0161ko Gvardiol were all injured and Nathan Ak\u00e9 has had to have his minutes carefully managed, creating urgency for defensive reinforcements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve been talking for quite a while and obviously talked with different clubs,\u201d Gu\u00e9hi told reporters following his City debut in Saturday\u2019s 2\u20130 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers. \u201cI felt from conversations, through talking with some of the players here, that this was the place for me to improve, to get better and just to help as much as possible. Phil and John, conversations with the manager, conversations with [director of football] Hugo [Viana], so it’s been great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gu\u00e9hi has played with both Foden and Stones at international level with England, and has been a teammate of Foden since their first appearances for the U16s a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Selected straight into the starting XI, Gu\u00e9hi assumed the role of senior centre back, partnering 21-year-old Abdukodir Khusanov. His arrival also eased pressure on 20-year-old Max Alleyne, who dropped to the bench for the win over Wolves.<\/p>\n
Had events taken a different course last summer, City would not have had the chance to sign Gu\u00e9hi this month because he might already have been at Liverpool. The reigning champions had been close to adding him in the previous transfer window, with a \u00a335 million agreement reached with Palace that was cancelled when the Eagles could not secure a replacement before the deadline. It was assumed Liverpool would renew their interest, but that path is now closed and Gu\u00e9hi said he had been \u201cvery close\u201d to joining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gu\u00e9hi says discussions with John Stones and Phil Foden convinced him to join Manchester City now….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,1397],"tags":[1081,1305,1393],"class_list":["post-6288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-transfer-news","tag-adaptation","tag-bench-selection","tag-centre-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288","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=6288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}