Rayan Cherki joining Manchester City from Lyon pairs a mouthwatering creative talent with the most successful and innovative coach of the 21st century.
The 21-year-old scored 12 goals and laid on 19 assists in 2024/25 (those 31 goals involvements are one more than Lamine Yamal managed for Barcelona) and joins a club that has racked up six of the 10 highest-scoring Premier League seasons of all time under Pep Guardiola.
Departing club great Kevin De Bruyne leaves gargantuan shoes to fill at City, but Cherki looks up for the challenge. Who wouldn’t be excited to see how this might play out?
Well, quite a lot of people, as it happens. A cursory glance over social media shows plenty of fans and a not insignificant number of pundits wondering how Guardiola might “ruin” a “baller” like Cherki.
It would be one thing if this was just internet gibberish.
MORE: Tijjani Reijnders to Manchester City: Contract, debut date as Dutch star leaves AC Milan
Tijjani Reijnders has also moved to City as part of Guardiola’s rebuild, with the Netherlands midfielder’s switch from AC Milan for an initial £46 million ($62.3m) confirmed shortly after Cherki joined £30.5m ($41.3m).
Reijnders’ switch has been in the works for some time and, during a press conference while on international duty last week, he was asked whether the “freedom” in his game would be lost under Guardiola.
This is at a press conference for the Dutch national team. The Netherlands is the home of the positional play style that first Johan Cruyff and then Guardiola refined in Barcelona — a style that has shaped and defined modern football. It felt a little bit like we were through the looking glass.
Does Pep Guardiola ruin ‘ballers’?
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is at ground zero of this discourse. The enigmatic Sweden striker and Guardiola famously did not see eye-to-eye during his one season at Barcelona in 2009/10. He was withering over what he perceived to be subservience among the Blaugrana squad.
I’d already got the impression that Barcelona was a little like being back at Ajax, it was like being back at school. None of the lads acted like superstars, which was strange. Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, the whole gang – they were like schoolboys. The best footballers in the world stood there with their heads bowed, and I didn’t understand any of it. It was ridiculous.
Everyone did as they were told. I didn’t fit in, not at all. I thought, just enjoy the opportunity, don’t confirm their prejudices. So I started to adapt and blend in. I became way too nice. It was mental. I said what I thought people wanted me to say. It was completely messed up. I drove the club’s Audi and stood there and nodded my head. I hardly even yelled at my team-mates any more. I was boring. Zlatan was no longer Zlatan.
The above extract from Ibrahimovic’s autobiography I Am Zlatan persistently followed Guardiola around, even as he racked up trophies at Bayern Munich, with Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery supplying goals by the bucketload to Robert Lewandowski. Then still at City, where after a tricky first season, De Bruyne, David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling combined in a dazzling ensemble to smash the Premier League’s goals and points records in 2017/18.
Ultimately, Ibrahimovic was an entertaining and bizarre outlier. It was hard to imagine Xavi and Andres Iniesta blathering about themselves in the third person and Guardiola’s results spoke for themselves.
But as those results got even better at City — a second, titanic final-day title struggle against Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool falling their way in 2021/22 and a historic treble triumph the following season — the conversation changed. Jack Grealish and Ibrahimovic are an unlikely odd couple but the £100m England star and his experience at City convinced many that Zlatan might have had a point.
MORE: Man City reach agreement to sign Rayan Cherki
Is Guardiola to blame for Jack Grealish’s Man City struggles?
As Cherki and Reijnders begin their City journey, Grealish’s is, to all intents and purposes, at an end. He was omitted from Guardiola’s squad for the Club World Cup despite there being spaces available on the roster.
After joining City from boyhood club Aston Villa for a then-record British transfer fee, Grealish had a so-so first season in 2021/22 as City won the Premier League and reached the semifinals of the Champions League and FA Cup.
A season of acclimatisation to Guardiola’s demands is normal for creative midfielders and attackers (put a pin in “Pep has ruined Cherki” chat rearing its head by October…), and, during the second half of 2022/23, Grealish became one of Guardiola’s dependables. He made the position on the left wing his own and was integral to City’s irresistible treble charge.
Since then, it’s been somewhere between underwhelming and shambolic. Grealish has spoken openly about struggling mentally in the aftermath of the treble and alluded to further difficulties away from the pitch. Throw in ill-timed and persistent injury problems and the absolute trust Guardiola had two years ago has dissipated entirely.
Even during the second half of last season, when Grealish was handed a surprise start against Real Madrid in the Champions League before hobbling off injured, City looked a better team with the 29-year-old on the field. The problem was getting him there.
Grealish thanked Guardiola profusely after City’s treble win and has always spoken warmly of his coach. That might change amid the coming fallout of his expected Etihad Stadium departure, but one interview given during the successful 2022/23 campaign has come to follow Guardiola around as doggedly as Ibrahimovic’s musings.
“When I came here, I’ll be honest, it was so much more difficult than I thought,” he told Sky Sports after setting up Riyad Mahrez’s decisive goal in a 1-0 win over Chelsea. “In my head I thought I was going to the team sitting top of the league and I was going to get so many goals and assists and obviously it isn’t the case.
“A lot of teams tend to sit in against us and that wasn’t the case at Villa. [Former Villa manager] Dean Smith would tell me to go and find the weak link in the defence, whether that was on the right, the middle or whether I wanted to hug the touchline — and at Villa, I always had an overlapping full-back. I came into City, having been at Villa my whole life, and I’ve never had to change. I’ve always been used to that. I didn’t realise how hard it is to adapt to a different team and manager.”
There it was, fun-loving Jack having his freedom restricted by the professor of possession. Cherki arriving as Grealish looks for an exit has been seized upon by some as symbolic. See that young lad who scored an incredible goal against Spain and laid on an assist on his international debut? Well, we hope you enjoyed that because Pep’s got his hands on him now. Look at poor old Jack.
Has Pep Guardiola made football boring?
As with any hot take, there are kernels of truth in what Ibrahimovic and Grealish imply are the limitations of Guardiola’s style. It should also be acknowledged that, like many coaches, the City manager has become relatively more pragmatic with age.
His treble-winning back four comprised four natural central defenders — a far cry from Dani Alves tearing about Camp Nou. Erling Haaland’s arrival at City came with a trade-off. Cherki would certainly have been a delight to behold in the whizzing and whirring false-nine version of City. Guardiola’s team now doesn’t have the same fluency, but the other side of the equation is a player who breaks the 30-goal mark when he’s understandably considered to have had a poor season.
But does all of this mean Cherki will be shackled in Manchester? Absolutely not.
“Pep worked with me a lot, to improve more in my runs, to be more in the box and to be where you can score goals,” said Riyad Mahrez during the 2021/22 season, where he plundered 24 goals from the right wing.
Mahrez is an interesting case study and has also been cited around the Cherki deal, given their shared Algerian roots and penchant for a delicious first touch. Like Grealish, Mahrez joined City having impressed for a club playing in a very different style. But his transition from Leciester City proved far more successful. He hit double figures for goals in each of his five seasons in Manchester.
“Attacking players, [Pep] always gives us the freedom in the last 30 metres. You can do whatever you want. He obviously gives you the information of where he thinks the spaces are but at the end it is about you. The pitch belongs to us and he will never stop you from dribbling or anything else.”
Well, fancy that. The reality outlined by Mahrez is some distance away from what the perception has become.
Aside from Guardiola’s recent nods towards caution, there are wider frustrations that have led people to claim Cherki will no longer know what joy is. Juego de Posicion has become the dominant style of our times and, for every thrilling team such as Luis Enrique’s Paris Saint-Germain, there might be a more prosaic version such as Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.
After a season when City struggled for collective form and fitness and, as a consequence, were often a tough watch, it’s easy to view dull possession teams as a Guardiola legacy and exciting possession teams as a Guardiola antidote, even though his own influence is easy enough to spot. The interminable wait for a resolution to the Premier League’s case against City for over 100 alleged rule breaches also makes any discussions about football’s perceived ills easier to bolt onto the club. If City are the Death Star, why not make Guardiola Darth Vader?
But this dark lord is not going to take Cherki away from the light. Grealish’s fall from grace has often seen him replaced on the left wing by Jeremy Doku, who attempted the second most dribbles (177) in the Premier League last season, completing more than any other player (107). De Bruyne is leaving as arguably the best attacking midfielder in Premier League history. Phil Foden struggled this term but was voted PFA and FWA Player of the Year in 2023/24 as the Premier League’s outstanding creative force, having been “shackled” by Guardiola since the age of 16.
Cherki is an irresistible maverick and maybe he’ll be another Ibrahimovic or Grealish. Or, perhaps he’ll be another Messi, Pedro, Villa, Ribery, Robben, Thiago, David Silva, Bernardo Silva, De Bruyne, Gundogan, Sterling, Sane, Aguero, Foden, Alvarez or Mahrez. Which do you think is more likely?
