Manchester City have recently given up their Premier League crown to Liverpool, and Pep Guardiola’s side have looked like an imitation of their usual dominant self in doing so, especially defensively. Upon his arrival at the Etihad in 2016, Guardiola inherited a defence with Vincent Kompany and Nicolás Otamendi as the primary centre-backs, then promptly recruited John Stones from Everton for £47.5 million. Further investment in this area followed with the acquisition of Aymeric Laporte for a record fee of £57 million in January 2018 from Athletic Bilbao, but City have not brought in any more centre-backs since then. In that span of time, they have seen their erstwhile captain and bedrock of their modern success, Kompany, leave, while Guardiola has been forced to deploy Fernandinho, a defensive midfielder, at centre-back due to a serious injury to Laporte. Stones has fallen out of favour, as has Otamendi, and the Catalan manager has been fielding youngster Eric García at the back in recent matches. Most observers are of the opinion that City’s failure to recruit a top-level centre-back last summer was one of the biggest reasons for their limp title defence and the numbers seem to back it up. The Citizens having already conceded 33 goals at the time of writing, ten more than the 23 they let in across all of last season in the league.

The expected goals metrics bear this out as well, with City level with their xGA of 33.4. Thus, with the club looking to challenge Liverpool again next season, it is quite likely that they will make a belated move for a top-quality centre-back in the upcoming transfer window. However, there is a very specific set of attributes needed to be able to play in a Pep Guardiola team, thus any defender that City recruit will have to be proficient with the ball at his feet. It is extremely important for Guardiola for his centre-backs to be able to start attacks, which is why we have seen a trend of him playing midfielders at centre-backs all throughout his managerial career, whether it be Yaya Touré and Javier Mascherano at Barcelona, Javi Martínez and Xabi Alonso at Bayern Munich or Fernandinho at City.

With this in mind, we will now conduct a data analysis on some of the top leagues in Europe, to come up with a shortlist of players that City could target to fill the gap at centre-back, in line with Guardiola’s requirements.

Setting the field

We have considered seven of the top leagues in Europe for this data analysis – the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Eredivisie and Primeira Liga. We are looking at statistics from this season, with a filter of 900 minutes to weed out players who have not played consistently enough. Players from rival clubs in the Premier League are part of the dataset, but will obviously not be recommended as potential signings if they outperform on the metrics we select due to the low chance of any deal going through.

Our original long list had 606 players from these seven leagues who had played at centre-back this season. After applying our filter for minutes played, we were left with 408 names, on which we will now apply our metrics to arrive at potential transfer targets for City.

Defensive ability

While Guardiola prizes skill in possession, defenders in his teams do need to be able to perform their defensive duties as well. As his teams usually monopolize possession, they are liable to being caught on the counter-attack and, therefore, must possess very good skills in terms of winning defensive duels. Additionally, they must also be proficient at intercepting the ball. Our first chart, therefore, looks at these three metrics –

This chart has PAdj interceptions and defensive duels/90, along with the success rate for defensive duels as shown by the shade of red on each dot. The darker the shade, the higher the success rate. Of course, with such a large data set, it is impossible to evaluate every individual player, but there are some standout options as can be seen from the chart.

The likes of Sven Bender, Jan Bednarek, Bremer and César Martins all rank highly for PAdj interceptions, while also having success rates of over 60% for defensive duels. In fact, Martins and Bender have defensive duel success rates of nearly 70%, with PAdj interceptions of over 10 per game. Bremer, with 8.8 defensive duels/90, 10.6 PAdj interceptions and a duel win rate of 64%, is one of the few candidates who does well on all three metrics. On the other end, Marash Kumbulla and José Luis Palomino both have extremely high defensive duel/90 numbers; in fact, they have the highest numbers of any player in our selection. Kumbulla wins almost 72% of these duels, with 6.2 PAdj interceptions, while Palomino has a lower success rate of 63%, but with more interceptions (9.25).

These are just some of the players who have done well on these metrics this season. We will now look at some passing and creativity metrics, as these are equally, if not more, important to be able to play in a Pep Guardiola side at centre-back.

Creative ability

One effective metric to look at while assessing the passing, or rather creative ability, of a centre-back is progressive passes. These are passes which move the team closer to the opponent’s goal, and while their definitions differ based on which area of the pitch the pass is being made in, centre-backs can significantly advance their team’s play through such passes.

The chart also looks at through passes/90, as this is another effective metric to show a player’s ability to be able to create chances with effective passing. Daley Blind is the leader by miles on these metrics, posting nearly double the number of progressive passes/90 as the player in second place, David Alaba, and he also has the highest number of through passes/90. This is not unexpected, as the Dutchman has played in midfield throughout his career. In terms of the other contenders, the Bayern Munich pair of Alaba and Boateng post very good numbers as well, as do the likes of Leonardo Bonucci and Jonathan Tah.

Interestingly, Joël Veltman and César Martins show up on these charts after having come to the fore on the earlier defensive ability chart as well, making them both interesting options to consider at the moment. Willi Orban, Dan-Axel Zagadou and Jordan Lefort all also post progressive passes/90 stats of nearly 12 passes/90, making them very good creative options from the back as well.

This next chart looks at final third passes/90 and long passes per 90, using a colour scheme to indicate the success rate for final third passes with a deeper shade of blue indicating a higher success rate. The ability to make passes into the final third, and thus more dangerous areas of the pitch, is a very valuable trait for a centre-back; one that will be needed for any defender recruited by Manchester City. At the same time, centre-backs often look to move the ball upfield through long passes. Although they may not necessarily be into the final third, they are still a useful way to progress the ball up the field quickly.

Once again, we see Blind as the best performer on these metrics – he notches nearly 20 final third passes/90 minutes, with an 82% accuracy rate, and also makes 9.6 long passes/90. Alaba, Boateng and Bonucci show up as good performers on this chart as well, with Atalanta’s Rafael Tolói and the PSG trio of Marquinhos, Thiago Silva and Abdou Diallo being intriguing options. Once again, we see Blind’s Ajax teammate Veltman posting good numbers here as well – he makes just under 10 final third passes/90 with a superb success rate of 84%, with 5.6 long passes/90.

Final shortlist

So, now that we have run the rule over our long list of over 400 players through some important defensive and creative metrics, who are the players who stand out and can be considered as realistic signings for Manchester City?

David Alaba

The Bayern Munich star is one of the most versatile players on this list, having primarily played as a left-back throughout his career, but being converted into a centre-back this season. He plays in midfield for his national side, Austria, which explains his proficiency at the creative side of the game, as shown by the charts above. However, while he wasn’t one of the outperformers on the defensive metrics, he still performed credibly enough there (4.28 defensive duels/90 with a 64.8% win rate, and 6.24 PAdj interceptions), to indicate that he would be a good option for City. His versatility and top-level experience for Bayern are further reasons to make him one of the top contenders from this list.

Daley Blind

Blind is a similar candidate to Alaba, in that he is a left-footed player who has played in multiple positions throughout his career. Blind too has played at left-back and in midfield for both club and country throughout his career and has excelled at centre-back for Ajax this season. As the creative ability charts showed, he is streets ahead of the rest of the pack in terms of being able to contribute to his team’s build-up and attacking play, but as with Alaba, his defensive metrics are not to be sneered at (7.11 defensive duels/90 with a 71.9% success rate, and 7.98 PAdj interceptions). Blind is also vastly experienced at both club and international level; however, his previous spell in England with Manchester United and his obvious fondness for that club may make it difficult for City to persuade him to join them.

Joël Veltman

Blind’s Ajax teammate and centre-back partner could also be an intriguing option for City. Unlike Blind and Alaba, he is right-footed, and so could slot in beside Laporte to form a good defensive unit for the club. Veltman’s defensive numbers are broadly similar to those of Blind, but he outperforms Alaba by a big margin (7.56 defensive duels/90 with a 67% win rate, and 9.31 PAdj interceptions), while his offensive and creative output is also at a decent level, as seen above. At 28 years of age, with experience of playing in the Champions League as well as for the Netherlands at a World Cup, he would offer the leadership that City need at the back, along with the aforementioned defensive and creative skills.

Guardiola demands that his centre-backs be good on the ball, which is why there has been so much emphasis put on the creative side of the game. Of the players on this list, none of the outperformers on the defensive metrics did well on the creative side of things to put together a complete case for recruitment by City. Joël Veltman was the only player who did well on all three of our charts and this, combined with the fact that he is right-footed and thus would fit in immediately in City’s backline, makes him our top pick for City to go for to solve their issues at centre-back.