Pep Guardiola confirms Manchester City’s transfer priorities amid Abdukodir Khusanov and Omar Marmoush links

Manchester City’s transfer plans have long stood around the defensive and midfield roles, according to manager Pep Guardiola.

The Premier League champions have turned to the winter transfer window for first-team recruitment for the first time since 2018, when Txiki Begiristain and his colleagues sanctioned a blockbuster transfer fee to bring Aymeric Laporte to the club from Athletic Bilbao.

And the centre of defence has once again taken centre stage after a first-half to the season that has seen Guardiola’s options heavily depleted by fitness and injury concerns, moving the club in the direction of targets from France, Spain, and Brazil.

There is also believed to be attacking reinforcement being targeted with Eintracht Frankfurt’s Omar Marmoush a priority target and negotiations between the two clubs progressing positively over the last few days.

Now, speaking during his pre-match press conference ahead of Manchester City’s trip to face Brentford in the Premier League, Pep Guardiola has insisted that without injury problems hampering his squad this season, the club would not have turned to the January market.

“It’s what I want [players to return from injury]! If it would’ve happened, we would not have gone to the transfer window this season, absolutely not. And we would not be in the position that we are. But we struggled all season,” Guardiola admitted.

“We’ve had a lot of problems especially in the back-four and still we have, and that is the reason why the Club is thinking what we are going to do this transfer window or maybe in the summer.”

Quizzed on what the club’s priority positions are for the ongoing window and the forthcoming summer market, Pep Guardiola was surprisingly revealing as he explained, “From the beginning of the season, it was at the back and in the middle, yeah.”

He continued, “The positions up-front we are more or less OK, but at the back all season we’ve struggled a lot.”

However, when news of Manchester City agreeing a fee with Ligue 1 side Lens for Uzbek centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov was put to the Catalan coach, he remained tight-lipped with the response, “The club didn’t announce anything.”

The 20-year-old defender is expected to finalise a move to the Etihad Stadium at some stage this week, with contractual talks reaching an agreement over a four-and-a-half year contract with the option of a further 12 months.

It is believed that a medical is now in the process of being scheduled, while the player will also have to await a work permit before he is granted permission to move to Manchester and begin working with Pep Guardiola and his first-team squad.