Manuel Akanji was available, experienced and looks a very good fit for Man City
Dortmund's Swiss defender Manuel Akanji and Dortmund's Norwegian forward Erling Braut Haaland react prior to the German first division Bundesliga football match between Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt in Dortmund, western Germany, on August 14, 2021
By Sam Lee, Raphael Honigstein
The sight of Nathan Ake trudging off the St James’ Park pitch last weekend was more troublesome for Manchester City than was probably appreciated at the time.
He is not out for an especially lengthy period but the injury to the Netherlands international, ostensibly City’s fourth-choice centre-back, sparked the Premier League champions into an uncharacteristic last-minute transfer dash.
Ten days later, the search has concluded with Borussia Dortmund’s Manuel Akanji, as first reported by The Athletic yesterday. He is not somebody who had been especially high on any previous City shortlists, but one who ticks a few boxes right now.
Despite bringing in two new strikers and a midfielder for the new season, defensive numbers have been central to City’s summer transfer plans, based on the fact that seven senior defenders is seen as the absolute baseline number.
Marc Cucurella started the summer as one of City’s top targets, with Oleksandr Zinchenko expected to leave. At that point, City’s seven would have been Kyle Walker, Ruben Dias, John Stones, Aymeric Laporte, Ake, Joao Cancelo and Cucurella. When it became clear that Ake himself could go, approaches for Cucurella were delayed because, even with Zinchenko on his way out, City knew they would need a centre-back before anything else. Then they would deal with a left-back.
Had Ake left, City believed they would have been able to close a deal for Sevilla’s Jules Kounde. They had wanted to sign him two years ago but could not agree a fee, so moved on to Dias. They were willing to go back this summer before Chelsea and Barcelona entered the fray — although City sources feel that Barca could well have gazumped them, like they did Chelsea.
Barcelona signed Kounde this summer despite interest from Chelsea
Eventually, Ake stayed anyway and City deemed Cucurella too expensive. Despite signing Sergio Gomez for £11 million, the club insisted they wanted another, more senior option at left-back. They never found one, and while they rate Gomez, 21 highly, they would not be prepared to chuck him into the team in an injury crisis. So with Gomez replacing Zinchenko, it could be said that City had 6.5 defensive options…
So with injuries in the heart of the defence, Pep Guardiola was very concerned. Not that he would admit it in public.
Last Friday he said: “We thought about (signings) but Nathan is coming back soon, at the end of September or early October Ayme will be back too. I am happy with that. Maybe we will wake up in the morning and think we should buy a central defender, but we’re not thinking about that.”
Behind the scenes, the search was on for that extra defender, and this time it would have to be a centre-back.
Partly because there are no top-class options on the market right now, City had been looking for a very particular profile of player, one who may feature in fewer than 20 games, for example.
Yet one with top flight and international experience. And one that is for sale, but not too expensive.
Enter Akanji.
He arrived in Manchester on Tuesday night and is expected to undergo a medical on Wednesday.
The 27-year-old with 41 caps for Switzerland informed Dortmund in the spring that he would not renew his contract, which was due to expire in the summer of 2023. They had hoped to have sold him much earlier in the summer, but his wage demands had proven prohibitive for other suitors. City have reached a compromise that is lower than what he was asking for initially, but perhaps more than others would have stretched to.
Dortmund signed Germany internationals Nico Schlotterbeck and Niklas Sule this summer in anticipation of Akanji’s departure and the fact that he has not been in the squad for any of their games this season shows just how keen they were to move him on.
Enter City.
They see a player who is strong and good on the ball, generally playing shorter passes at Dortmund rather than anything too adventurous. And data from smarterscout — which gives players a rating from zero to 99 based on either how often they perform a given action compared to others in their position or how effective they are at it — highlights his propensity for shorter passes (link-up play volume, 76 out of 99) and that he keeps the ball well (ball retention ability, 92 out of 99).
He is right-footed, but more than comfortable with his left and can carry the ball out of defence, as shown by his above-average score for carry and dribble volume (64 out of 99). This will be useful against teams who sit deep and don’t press high. Akanji actually started his career as a winger.
Smarterscout’s “weighted duels” ratings assess a player’s effectiveness in one-on-one contests on the field — adjusting the results to reflect the quality of opponents. Put simply, competing for a header with Raheem Sterling is weighted differently than against Virgil van Dijk.
The pizza chart above shows that Akanji doesn’t compete for that many aerial duels (8 out of 99), and looking at his duel ratings below, his aerial ability is not hugely strong, in open play or at set pieces.
Stylistically he is perhaps more like Dias than Stones or Laporte, and more like Ake in terms of ability and where he fits into the pecking order.
Following on from an article on transfer suitability published on The Athletic last weekend — which used artificial intelligence to assess how a player may adapt to a new club — it’s possible to profile Akanji’s suitability to the City back line.
And Sentient Sports, the people behind that data, find that he appears to be an excellent fit in Guardiola’s team.
“In terms of tactical fit, he would maybe have to adapt to a higher line and higher press,” Sentient Sports say. “Akanji has mainly played in a 4-2-3-1 system at Dortmund as a right-sided centre-back and expect this is how he will be used at City in terms of a back four.”
“In terms of chemistry, we find that Akanji will link up well with his proposed team-mates,” they add. “In particular we predict he would create strong partnerships with Dias, Laporte, Walker, Rodri and Cancelo.
“As Akanji is fluent in German, Italian and French and knows conversational English, we expect he will be able to speak a common language with 17 members of this team (languages inferred based on career history and nationality). In the past he has been named in squads more than 60 times with Erling Haaland.”
That chemistry is very important. He is said to be a very likeable, intelligent person — he can multiply numbers between 11 and 99 in an instant— and how he fits into the squad is going to be very important, especially if not playing a lot of games. There are hallmarks with Ake there, too, who is a very committed member of the squad despite playing less than most of his team-mates.
“My favourite player is a good person,” Guardiola said in a recent interview. “Don’t misunderstand me, to be a football player you need the ego to be a bit high but not too high, and I love to work with this type of person.
“One of the things I ask the sporting directors of the club first of all is, ‘How is he as a person?’ I don’t care about the skills. Seve Ballesteros used to say, ‘The better the character, the better the swing.’
“It doesn’t make sense to try to win the titles when there are poisons and bad things in the locker room.”
While City are sure about the number of defensive options they need, it is unusual for them to alter the delicate balance of their squad. For example, one of the reasons they went with Kalvin Phillips this summer rather than, say, Aurelien Tchouameni, was because did not want any new holding midfielder to expect to usurp Rodri from the team and they were sure that Phillips would accept a rotation role.
Phillips and Guardiola (Photo: Matt McNulty – Manchester City/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
Guardiola has pushed back against suggestions that City’s squad is too small, too, and it all ties back into the idea that if too many top players are not playing they will become unhappy and performances can suffer.
City flirted with those issues towards the end of the 2020-21 season, because despite winning the league and reaching the Champions League final, several players wanted to leave, and dressing room harmony is of paramount importance.
Ideally for City, they would have signed a top left-back.
Laporte is not expected back until the end of September or early October following knee surgery in May, and City will have to treat him carefully, fearful that muscle problems could easily follow.
Dias had similar problems at the back end of last season and City do not want a repeat, especially as Ake and Stones also missed crucial matches. City went out of the Champions League with defensive absentees, but Laporte played through the pain barrier, alongside Fernandinho, to get Guardiola’s men over the line in the title race.
Another setback for Ake gave City flashbacks and left them with two fit senior central defenders, and concerns that things might not get better as the months go by.
Ake going off at St James’ Park (Photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Since Ake’s injury, the Champions League draw has thrown up games against Sevilla and Borussia Dortmund in the next fortnight, either side of a league game with Tottenham.
Guardiola considers Kyle Walker as third-choice centre-back at the moment, and the England international played there during a friendly with Barcelona last week.
Should Walker be needed to deputise in the middle, it would mean moving Joao Cancelo to the right side of defence, which is his natural side, but that then leaves City with a headache at left-back.
Had they signed Cucurella they would have had no qualms about slotting the Spaniard straight into the team, such is his experience of the Premier League and how highly he is rated by City.
That’s not the case with Gomez, nor the highly-rated young right-back Rico Lewis, and without being able to strengthen at full-back they turned their attention to new centre-backs instead, and it’s Akanji who is the chosen one.
His Dortmund spell has not been a huge success, with injury problems of his own and some poor performances, but City see enough potential there to help them out in a tight spot.
Quite where everybody fits in if and when all five centre-backs are fit at the same time remains to be seen, so too how Guardiola manages to keep them all happy. Ake considered an exit this summer as he wanted more playing time. Laporte was the same last year. It may be the case that one of the five, possibly even Akanji if not used, looks for a new challenge in 12 months.
City do not normally do late deals, or January deals, unless a top-class player becomes available, but they do not want to risk being left short at the back, either in the coming weeks or as the season progresses.
And with a fairly strict checklist to abide by, they were restricted in who they could bring in.
So welcome to Manchester, Manuel Akanji, one of the more unexpected City signings of recent times.
by Nigels Tackle » Tue Aug 30, 2022 2:50 pm 
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