4 of Manchester City’s potential stars for the 2024/25 season

Manchester City have an even bigger target in 2024/25, having entered the territory of unprecedented dominance in English football with their title win last season.

The key to success is to always reinvent yourself and evolve so that your competition doesn’t have time to catch up. While the clearest way to do this is to spend in the transfer market, giving young players the chance to step up can also have huge benefits, as long as they’re good enough.

The city has some of the best facilities in the world at its Etihad Campus base and is always polishing off new gems.

Leaving aside the obvious Phil Foden, Rico Lewis is a shining example from the last two years that there is a chance for young players in a Pep Guardiola side. The teenage right-back made 50 appearances in 2022/23 and 2023/24 and remains an important member of the squad.

Here are four names who could be in line for a successful 2024/25 season…

City fans have been given plenty of reason to be excited about what Oscar Bobb can do. The Norwegian striker has been at the club since he was 16, progressing through the final stages of the academy to make his first-team debut just under a year ago.

Bobb made as many as 26 appearances across all competitions last season. Those outings only totalled around 800 minutes, but it was an important step towards proving himself to Guardiola on a senior stage. That was followed by a pre-season and a start in the Community Shield.

The 21-year-old is also already a regular for the Norwegian national team – a teammate of Erling Haaland, having represented his country eight times since 2023.

James McAtee, like the aforementioned Bobb, is how City and Guardiola plan to replace Julian Alvarez following his £81.5million move to Atletico Madrid.

McAtee, a Salford boy who has been at City since he was ten, has been preparing for this moment by spending the last two seasons on loan at Sheffield United in the Championship and Premier League – he has made 75 appearances in total for the Blades.

The 21-year-old was another young starter in the Community Shield, having previously been tipped by Guardiola for a potentially significant role this season.

“I would love to keep him with us next season because he’s a special guy to play in small spaces, in the pockets, and we don’t have many of those,” the manager said. “He’s a player I have a high, high opinion of, and I would like him to be able to fit in properly with the team.”

“So smart, so good,” was how Guardiola described Nico O’Reilly after the Community Shield. It was a first-team debut for the 19-year-old midfielder, who stands at over 6ft 1in tall, although he is expected to start training with the first team as early as December 2022.

O’Reilly has an elegant, flowing style and is known for having an eye for the spectacular, having scored a stoppage-time scorpion goal to win an Under-18 Premier League match.

The best thing he can do now is to continue absorbing as much as he can from the people around him.

Argentine midfielder Maximo Perrone will need things to fall in his favour to have a genuine chance of a breakthrough, largely just because of the competition in front of him. But the 21-year-old featured regularly during pre-season and served out his loan spell last season.

Perrone has made 29 La Liga appearances, the majority of them as a starter, for Las Palmas, who managed to survive in the top flight following promotion in 2023, gaining invaluable experience along the way.

He has only made two appearances for City’s first team so far, but could be a useful option in the rotation.