Man City chairman and Pep Guardiola have been clear on Nico Gonzalez future

'We feel' - Man City chairman and Pep Guardiola have been clear on Nico Gonzalez future

Manchester City midfielder Nico Gonzalez has questions over his future at the club after just six months

Khaldoon Al Mubarak spoke about Nico Gonzalez in his annual interview

Nico Gonzalez's future at Manchester City is more unclear than it should be. The £50m January signing is expected to be part of Pep Guardiola's squad for next season, but that there is any doubt at all after just six months tells you that all has not gone as planned.

City insiders were keen to stress amid their £175m splurge on five players in the winter window that this wasn't your average panic buy. Measures had been taken to stabilise the team for the season, but all of the buys were also ones for the long term that would bring down the age of the squad and be seen as the start of the rebuild.

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Omar Marmoush has been the face of it after his £59m move from Frankfurt but Gonzalez's arrival was celebrated given how much fans had craved another midfielder. Expectations for both went into overdrive after a 4-0 win over Newcastle in February that saw the Egyptian score a hat-trick in a game bossed from the midfield by Gonzalez.

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For Guardiola, who had heard rumours of the youngster's talent coming through Barcelona's academy when he was in charge of Bayern Munich, it was all the evidence he needed to go public about what a proper player he had on his hands.

“The club bought an incredible player for the future in terms of mentality,” he said in February. “Maybe for the player it was better to stay in Barcelona [when he did].

"Barcelona’s academy shows you it is the best in the world, how it teaches you the concepts: the body shape, how to pass the ball. In Porto, Sergio Conceicao helps a lot to bring his football, how to be aggressive and smart and play a different type of game.”

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For a while, Gonzalez was the go-to for Guardiola. That Newcastle game was the first one of nine starts in 12 games, with two FA Cup matches and the Manchester derby the ones he did not feature in.

The win at Everton would be his last start until the final day of the season though, with seven games on the bench as the team found their best form of the campaign. That followed into the Club World Cup, with just one start in four - and that in arguably the worst team performance against the weakest opposition.

With the manager calling for a smaller squad, and with competition for places intensified following summer spending, doubts over Gonzalez's future have risen. As with any player over the years, if an acceptable offer is brought to the club it will be received.

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But at the same time, it is worth pointing back to the start of the summer when chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak spoke about the rebuild of the squad starting in January and the 'very good' feeling for Gonzalez and others.

"All of them are players that we've been following for a while, that have been well scouted, that fit within the profile in terms of both age and position and, technical versatility, that fits within the way we've worked on this team," he said.

"Nico González, very talented player again, has been on our radar for a while. We had very specific needs in that holding midfielder position in January.

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"Its never easy to move players in in the January window, never easy for them to come in and immediately perform in the Premier League to start with, in our team which is again, quite a team. But credit to all these four players.

"They all came in and immediately, added to the club and to the team. We feel very good. We feel very good about these players."

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