The 2025/26 Premier League campaign has been one of change for Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola and his first team squad, and it has most certainly been one of mixed emotions for loyal City fans. It also seems that the twists, turns, trials and tribulations of the season are as yet, far from over as well.
Having gainfully closed the gap that had been slowly built up by Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and his first team charges in first place in the English top flight table and drawn ourselves level on points to give the best return possible to those in Manchester City best seats, it seemed that momentum was fully back at the Etihad Stadium and advantage was once again ours at the true business end of the season.
An unexpected and poor 3-3 draw with David Moyes Everton side on Monday evening at their new Hill Dickinson Stadium more than threw the cat amongst the pigeons though, and it could have been worse as we required a late stoppage time leveller from Jeremy Doku in the 97th minute to save our blushes and take a point. We now trail by five points, but have that all important game in hand still in our favour.
The season will ultimately take care of itself and the psychological advantage should remain with us, but we also knew that last summer was the first stage in our first team rebuild, and with major changes being made and plenty of well known names joining the legend that is Kevin de Bruyne in being shown the door, further tweaks were made in the New Year window.
Additional changes will again be made during the off season break and City fans already know those players that will be joining John Stones and Bernardo Silva in moving on when we look at their game time, the arranged loans away or contractual situations. We know we will get further new arrivals as well, and the transfer window speculation rumour mill has been full for months on which reported players may be coming in through the doors before the 2026/27 campaign kicks off.
This week we have seen a new name in the frame and should there be any truth to it, it would see us return once more to Dean Court and Bournemouth AFC having picked up Antoine Semeyo a few shorts months ago, but this time around we would be bringing back the extremely talented Eli Junior Kroupi.
The 19 year old French youth international has been a revolution for the Cherries this season following his arrival from Lorient last summer for a snip transfer fee of only £10 million (he signed in January but remained on loan with his former club until the end of the campaign initially), and having been considered to be one of the best talents born worldwide in 2006 by The Guardian he has absolutely lived up to that in his Premier League appearances so far.
He is going to be in demand this summer and manager Andoni Iraola moving on at the end of the campaign will not help their chances of keeping him, although he is under contract until the summer of 2030 and the club are said to be confident of doing just that.
It remains to be seen if we have a real interest and then if he makes the move to us, but the majority of fans would welcome it.
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