Pep Guardiola, the manager of Manchester City, has the opportunity to sign Inter Milan midfielder Nicolo Barella this summer in the ideal transfer deal.
Even though the Citizens have already added a new midfielder during this summer’s transfer window in the form of Mateo Kovacic, who joined from Chelsea on a four-year, £30 million deal, we think they could still use some additional midfield reinforcement with a player who would be an immediate improvement over the Croatian.
According to reports from earlier this week, Guardiola is a great fan of the 26-year-old, and should City decide to sell Bernardo Silva this summer, they may try to make a play for him.
Even though Kovacic played almost 900 more league minutes than Barella did for City last season, Barella still outperformed Kovacic, especially from an attacking standpoint.
In particular, the Italian outperformed the 29-year-old in terms of shot-creating actions per 90 minutes (4.17 vs. 3.27), important passes (55 vs. 23), progressive carries (76 vs. 37), and progressive passes (214 vs. 153) as well as overall.
The Inter midfielder got a season rating of 6.94/10, which is higher than Kovacic’s rating of 6.48/10, based on their respective overall performances throughout the past Premier League and Serie A seasons.
Should Silva move on to another team this summer, it would make sense for them to sign Barella, who has previously been called a “fantastic” player by Jamie Carragher, given that they have already seen Ilkay Gundogan leave the club this season.
Moving forward, we believe that signing the Italian might be the ideal method for the triple winners to further improve their midfield after the arrival of Kovacic if the Portuguese international decides to leave City in the upcoming few weeks.