These are your Manchester City evening headlines for Friday, August 12.
Pep Guardiola outlines Man City plan for new signing Sergio Gomez
Pep Guardiola says that Sergio Gomez will compete for a place in the Manchester City first team when he signs from Anderlecht. City have agreed a £11m fee with the Belgian club for Gomez, a young left-back who caught the eye under former Blues defender Vincent Kompany last season.
City are still aiming to sign a left-back after losing Oleksandr Zinchenko to Arsenal and missing out on top target Marc Cucurella. However, a decision has been taken recently for Gomez to stay at the Etihad once his move has been completed regardless of if the club are able to bring another left-back in.
Guardiola was happy to speak about the qualities of Gomez ahead of City's league game with Bournemouth on Sunday, referencing his past in the Spain youth teams when he came up against a teenage Phil Foden in the Under-17s World Cup. While the 21-year-old has been portrayed as a signing for the future, Guardiola is happy to use him now.
Hear more from Guardiola here.
Inside the training camp where first-team trio stunned Man City academy
John Stones, Phil Foden, and Ilkay Gundogan weren't planning on spending a week with the academy when it became clear they would not be able to travel with the first team to the United States this summer - and Manchester City's youth coaches certainly hadn't prepared for having them.
Pep Guardiola had made it clear that he would much rather have not lost the players for a sizable chunk of pre-season, with his squad thinned given that they did not meet entry requirements for the US. The message to the academy was to include the senior stars as much as possible in the original plans for the Croatia camp and to make them adapt rather than tailoring to their needs, and the dialogue was constantly back and forth as the first-team coaches wanted progress reports on how they were doing.
It quickly became clear there was no need at all to worry. If there was any potential for further awkwardness at the unusual circumstances, they quickly disappeared as the senior players left an incredible mark on the youngsters and staff during their time in Croatia.
Read more about the pre-season training here.
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