Eliaquim Mangala could earn a surprise reprieve at Manchester City after the defender returned to training with Pep Guardiola’s squad, though Samir Nasri, Wilfried Bony and Jason Denayer are all set to leave as they are not involved with the main group.
Mangala was bought for £42m from Porto in 2014 but uneven form caused him to lose his starting place. The 26-year-old spent last season on loan at Valencia.
While City are still open to offers for him, Guardiola is involving Mangala with the first-team squad and the France defender could yet stay at the club. City lack depth at centre-back where Vincent Kompany, John Stones and Nicolás Otamendi are the only senior options.
If Mangala did remain at City it would be a significant turnaround in his fortunes given he has not featured since a 1-1 draw at Swansea City in May 2016. Nasri, Bony and Denayer all appear to have played their final games for City, though. The trio are not part of Guardiola’s plans and, it is understood, are training away from the squad.
City finished third last season, managing 12 clean sheets, five behind the division’s best of Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. Guardiola has moved to improve the defence over the summer by signing the full-backs Kyle Walker, Benjamin Mendy and Danilo. Yet he also pointed to problems in attack.
“Yes, of course we’ll try [to defend better],” he said. “But the season that just happened wasn’t just about what happened in our box. We just made it [a strike-rate of] 60-70% for chances we created and that’s poor. We’ve tried to buy good defenders but also creative players and strikers to score more goals.”
Guardiola failed to claim any silverware for City, the first trophyless season of his managerial career. The head coach has to ensure his side are serious title contenders this season or it could be his last.
Yet he said: “It’s the same pressure as I had last season. We are here to win the games and titles. The big fail now takes one week in football. The second week the people want a new [manager] for the next games. I’m honest in my job. I will do my best like I did last season. If the club decides he is not able, we are going to take a solution. I feel the same pressure as at Barcelona when I arrived. People say in first press conference we are favourites. We have to deal with that and handle that. We are going to see at the end of the season what happens knowing how difficult it is.”
Guardiola will not change his style. He said: “If you see the team last season and this season, the four [pre-season] games we played, the fundamentals are the same. But we cannot forget that when we do something better than last season it’s because we’ve been one year together. If we do something good this season it’s because we were together last season, and we know better, and I know better, and they know me better, and that’s why it’s easy. I would like in three or four passes to score a goal, but sometimes it’s not possible and you have to move them [the opposition] a little bit more, and because our strikers are not Peter Crouch, our strikers are completely different, they are not strong in the air.”