Man City renew interest in “genius” star who’s far better than Grealish

2024 was the year Manchester City achieved an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League title, but what will 2025 bring?

Despite beating Leicester City 2-0 on Sunday, Savinho and Erling Haaland on target at the King Power, Pep Guardiola‘s team are still down in sixth, having yielded a miserly five points from a possible 27 beforehand, with Guardiola admitting his side are “at risk” of missing out on Champions League qualification.

So, having only signed the aforementioned Savinho for a reported £33m in the summer, one would imagine the Sky Blues are able to spend in January, so will Man City be busy this month?

Man City looking at Barcelona star

According to a report from Spain, Manchester City are amongst a group of major European clubs who’ve all expressed an interest in Dani Olmo; fellow-Premier League outfits Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham, as well as the current top two in the Bundesliga, Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen, are also named as “interested parties”.

So, why is there so much speculation surrounding Olmo’s future, considering he’s only just rejoined Barcelona from RB Leipzig for a fee of €60m (£51m) as recently as August?

Well, as of midnight on New Year’s Day, Olmo is technically a free agent, having been deregistered by La Liga for the second half of the season.

La Liga’s strict financial rules, known as Squad Cost Limit, sees the league control how much each club can spend on transfers and, crucially in this case, wages prior to the start of the season, based on projected earnings.

To cut a long, and potentially complicated, story short, for the first half of the campaign, Barça deregistered Andreas Christensen after he suffered an Achilles injury against Valencia on the opening day of the season.

This freed-up space for Olmo’s wages in the Blaugrana’s budget, but now Christensen is fit again, he is automatically registered with Olmo thereby currently unable to feature, with the Catalan giants almost certainly needing to sell someone else before this issue can be resolved.

Thus, at the time of writing, Olmo is free to talk to and sign for any club he wishes, which would be a major coup given that Josh Bunting has described the Spaniard as a “technical genius”, so could a move to Manchester City be his next destination?

How Dani Olmo would improve Manchester City

Fair to say, Manchester City could do with some extra attacking firepower.

Haaland’s header at the weekend took his tally to 19 for the campaign but, behind the Norwegian, Joško Gvardiol is their second-top scorer, with Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, Jérémy Doku, Kevin De Bruyne, Savinho and Jack Grealish scoring just 13 goals between them this season, a pitifully low tally after 28 matches.

The only member of that sextet still yet to get off the mark is Grealish; it’s actually 383 days, and counting, since his last club goal.

As one prominent social media account mischievously put it on Twitter, Gabriel Jesus has now scored more goals in 2025 than Grealish managed throughout the entirety of 2024.

This lack of end-product means the Citizens will surely be looking to upgrade, so how do Grealish and Olmo compare?

As outlined in the table above, since the start of last season, Olmo’s statistics significantly exceed those of Grealish, scoring four times as many goals in fewer minutes, while his goals – xG figure of +4.9 underlines the Spaniard’s efficiency in front of goal.

Also, contrary to his previous reputation as a maverick, Olmo attempted 40 more take-ons and was vastly more successful when it came to dribbles, underlining Richard Jolly’s belief that Guardiola’s regimented system does not get the best out of Grealish.

Olmo has been deployed both centrally and on the left by Barça boss Hansi Flick, suggesting he could slot seamlessly into Man City’s team in either role and might just be the attacking difference-maker the beleaguered champions need to spark their season into life.

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