The extraordinary Man City team discarded by short-sighted decisions | OneFootball

As Manchester City’s 52-match unbeaten run at home came to an end, right-backs provided contrasting images. There was Pedro Porro, putting Tottenham 3-0 up with a fine finish, ensuring there would be no comeback. There was Kyle Walker, who saw Timo Werner scorching past him to set up the fourth.

In a parallel universe, Porro could have been Walker’s successor. He was a City player for three years, albeit in a distinctly modern way: bought from sister club Girona, loaned out and then sold without debuting, he produced another €10m for City in a sell-on clause when Tottenham bought him from Sporting CP.

As City prepare for a rematch with Spurs, it is when Porro’s form has slumped, probably from being overworked as one of the few Tottenham players who have not got injured.

There is a question if the in-form Djed Spence is now the best right-back at Ange Postecoglou’s disposal.

But Porro would stroll into this City team. Since Walker tired of opponents accelerating past him and decamped to AC Milan in search of a slower league, four players have played right-back for City. None is a right-back and each has experienced trauma: Manuel Akanji has been injured, Matheus Nunes was tormented by Bradley Barcola, Rico Lewis by Vinicius Junior, Abdukodir Khusanov by Kylian Mbappe.

While City are out of the Champions League, two of their former right-backs remain in it, even if neither, like Porro, ever played for them and another Girona alumnus, Yan Couto, was an unused substitute in both legs of Borussia Dortmund’s win over Sporting. But Jeremie Frimpong has been in Bundesliga team of the season in the last two seasons; since the start of the 2022-23 campaign, he has 26 goals. He is arguably one of the best five right-backs in the global game. As, when Frimpong was sold in 2019 and Porro in 2022, was Walker. Perhaps City assumed he was immortal. Now they can look short-sighted in dispensing with all of his possible replacements.

City’s rebuild began in January. And yet it was notable that their signings came in positions where they had players and sold them. Some of the vacancies in their squad could have been filled without cost. If City’s sales of the up-and-coming helped fund the £170m January spending spree, they could also have rendered much of it redundant.

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Pedro Porro joined Man City for £11m in 2019 (Getty Images)

If one explanation is that some of the departures were not good enough or ready to slot into a champion team, the counter-argument is that City may have been guilty of negligence, forgetting the future while assuming their ageing players would not continue forever. If the sold – either academy products or those, like Porro and Couto, imported at a young age – gave City vast leeway within PSR, did they become addicted to pure profit? City became experts in trading; except that, when they needed reinforcements, they had sold some who could have been ready-made replacements.

When the lone defensive midfielder, Rodri, was injured, and before City spent £49m on Nico Gonzalez, it was notable they had dispensed of each of Aleix Garcia, now Frimpong’s Bayer Leverkusen teammate, Douglas Luiz, who cost Juventus £50m last summer, and Romeo Lavia, for whom Chelsea paid a similar sum. They considered re-signing the Brazilian in January, though in mitigation Pep Guardiola was always an admirer and Douglas Luiz was denied a UK work permit to play for City while on their books. Lavia was sold in the same summer Kalvin Phillips joined; a misjudgement that may have triggered others. That said, the reality Lavia has only appeared in 11 of Chelsea’s 64 league games since signing suggests he would hardly have been the ever-available understudy for Rodri City needed.

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Cole Palmer joined Chelsea after Pep Guardiola failed to give him reassurances over game time with Man City (Getty Images)

In defence, when City were short of fit centre-backs before Khusanov and Vitor Reis arrived, it prompted the thought that they should have kept Taylor Harwood-Bellis, at least until they signed someone of the level required.

In goal, there may be doubts about Ederson’s long-time future. James Trafford needed first-team exposure and had a dodgy first season at Burnley. But he is in a sensational second, which prompts the thought City may have been better off loaning him out rather than selling the England Under-21 international.

In attack, Erling Haaland was the only genuine option as a No 9 in the first half of the season; meanwhile, Liam Delap is one of only a dozen players in double figures for Premier League goals this season. There is expected to be a summer scrabble for his services. And if Delap’s status as a specialist centre-forward meant City would prefer a more versatile option, which they eventually got at a considerable cost in Omar Marmoush, a series of other attack-minded players have been allowed to go.

Two, Brahim Diaz and Morgan Rogers, have also scored against City this season. If the Aston Villa player, whose last football while owned by City was to score one goal in 22 games on loan at Blackpool, has developed to such an extraordinary extent that few could have foreseen it, there are also hints that Guardiola was not enamoured with his attitude. Certainly, he does not feel a typical Guardiola player: more physical, less technical.

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Morgan Rogers has thrived since leaving Man City (Getty Images)

But Rogers, who destroyed City with his dynamism in December, has kicked on at a point when some of their established options in attacking midfield have regressed. As Kevin de Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and, perhaps, Bernardo Silva near the end, he might have been the future.

And there is the man who should have been. Cole Palmer was sold soon after scoring a Riyad Mahrez-esque goal in the Community Shield; the sort he scored frequently for City’s youth teams, usually with director of football Txiki Begiristain in attendance. He could plead ignorance of the Mancunian’s talent. Only three players have been directly involved in 50 Premier League goals since the start of last season: Mohamed Salah, Haaland and Palmer.

If City could have paired two of them, the other has a pertinence. Letting Palmer slip through their grasp could prove a generational mistake like Chelsea selling Salah or, for that matter, De Bruyne, a decision to regret for a decade.

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Jeremie Frimpong was on the books at Man City until 2019 (AP)

Because while some of those sold - Arijanet Muric, Shea Charles, Samuel Edozie and Juan Larios, to name but four who produced profits that looked a triumph of negotiating – were not good enough, because while City have some protection in buyback clauses, because while it is unrealistic and unfair to suggest they should have predicted everything that has happened, they should have seen some of it coming.

Already this season, they have had too many reasons to rue the ones that got away. And if they spend the summer looking for their answer to Palmer or Rogers or Frimpong or Trafford, they may wonder why they missed the answer standing right in front of them.