After reaching a seventh successive FA Cup semi-final on Sunday, Manchester City’s focus now turns back to ensuring they’ll be in next season’s Champions League.
With nine Premier League fixtures to go, Pep Guardiola’s team are fifth, thereby occupying the final Champions League position, but they’re far from guaranteed to stay there, given that five clubs are four points or fewer behind.
With a Manchester derby to come at Old Trafford on Sunday, it is imperative that the Sky Blues beat bottom-three dwellers Leicester at the Etihad on Wednesday night.
As Guardiola targets three points from that seeming home banker, he should unleash Man City’s “quality” youngster ahead of Abdukodir Khusanov.
How Abdukodir Khusanov has performed at Man City
As noted by Philip Buckingham of the Athletic, Manchester City outspent the other 19 Premier League clubs combined in January, splashing around £180m on five new recruits, including Khusanov, who arrived from Lens for a reported fee of £33.8m.
The 21-year-old has enjoyed a meteoric rise, considering he was playing for Enerhetyk-BDU Minsk in the Belarusian top division as recently as July 2023, becoming the first Uzbek to feature in the Premier League 18 months later.
The defender debuted against Chelsea in January, ‘thrown in at the deep end’ according to Jordan Campbell of the Athletic, before making an almighty error less than three minutes in, his ‘undercooked’ back-header gifting the Blues an early opener.
Luckily for him, Man City roared back to win 3-1.
After a difficult start to life in Manchester, Khusanov was named the club’s Player of the Month for February, as voted for by fans, with the club’s official channels already believing he has ‘captured the hearts’ of supporters.
Nevertheless, this didn’t save him from being taken off at half time of the Citizens’ FA Cup tie at Bournemouth on Sunday, with Man City a goal down and Khusanov having been booked.
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So, it remains to be seen if he’ll keep his place in the starting lineup against Leicester, although we’re advocating for Pep Guardiola to unleash a home-grown youngster instead.
Man City's best replacement for Khusanov
Man City’s come-from-behind 2-1 victory at Bournemouth is largely credited to Guardiola’s decision to replace Khusanov with Nico O’Reilly at the interval in Dorset.
Within four minutes, O’Reilly had put the ball on a plate for Erling Haaland to equalise before also getting the assist for Omar Marmoush’s winner later on.
Speaking to Gabriel Clarke of ITV after full time, Guardiola praised the 20-year-old’s impact as “outstanding”, adding “he’s going to play in the semi-final for sure”, given his form in the FA Cup to date.
Emlyn Begley of BBC Sport notes that O’Reilly is an ‘attacking midfielder… by trade’, but he is certainly versatile and he’s been catching the eye for a number of months yet. Perhaps the best source of praise came from City content creator Steven Mcinerney, who stated that “Nico has that La Masia intelligence with the physicality of someone like Rice.”
Meantime, Ben Fisher of the Guardian emphasises that the introduction of the £2.9k-per-week earner ‘transformed’ Man City’s performance at Bournemouth, thanks to his ‘seemingly bottomless energy’, becoming the first substitute to register two assists for the Sky Blues since İlkay Gündoğan at Leeds in December 2021.
So, let’s assess his statistics for the club so far.
Appearances
10
Minutes
553
Goals
3
Assists
2
Chances created
8
Passing accuracy %
90.36%
Take-on success %
51.39%
% of ground duels won
63.7%
% of aerial duels won
60%
Interceptions
1
Clearances
7
Tackles
19
Ball Recoveries
34
Touches per 90
77.65
As the table outlines, O’Reilly is very much still the new kid on the block, playing little over 550 senior minutes so far, while four of his ten appearances have come as a substitute, debuting in the FA Community Shield back in August.
Nevertheless, he’s already shown his quality, and the fact he can play multiple different positions makes him an invaluable asset for Guardiola, so we’re sure the Man City faithful would love to see him handed a first-ever Premier League start when Leicester visit the Etihad on Wednesday.
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ByJoe NuttallMar 31, 2025