Nico O’Reilly is not the archetypal Man City midfielder. But he is perfect for them right now – The Athletic

Manchester City have signed 11 players to be part of Pep Guardiola’s squad as part of an extensive overhaul since the start of 2025, but none have made as big an impact in that period as Nico O’Reilly.

The 20-year-old, who came through the City academy having started training with the club as an under-six, broke through in the second half of last season as a left-back, but over the course of the past three weeks has made himself an important part of the midfield.

City have signed players with huge talent and potential, from Gianluigi Donnarumma to Rayan Cherki to Abdukodir Khusanov, but not one of the new faces has been as reliably consistent as O’Reilly, and having already been a regular starter despite competition from new arrivals, he suddenly feels like an integral part of a team now pushing for the title.

His two goals against Newcastle United on Saturday, as well as one against Fulham in the previous league game, highlight the all-action role he has performed alongside Rodri and Bernardo Silva, probably the two most influential players in the squad.

It is quite telling, actually, that those three have come to make up the heart of the team at a time when so much has changed on the pitch for City over the past 13 months. They are the ones who “know the patterns”, as Guardiola has called it in the past, the players who understand exactly what the coach wants to do, at a time when so much is being asked of so many new signings.

“For Gigio (Donnarumma), for Khusanov, with Matheus Nunes playing new in that position (right-back), Nico Gonzalez or Tijjani (Reijnders) for example, players that play in the middle, yeah we need time, still it’s not the final product, we need time,” Guardiola explained recently.

“It’s been very different,” January arrival Antoine Semenyo told reporters last week. “Very intense, ball-dominant. I haven’t really been in a team that’s ball-dominant before. It’s just like being really patient, understanding when to slow down the game, when to speed up and being in the right positions.”

Marc Guehi, who also signed last month, said much the same to TNT Sports at the weekend: “I’ve had to adapt completely, change my game completely. It’s difficult because there are so many ideas, it’s more thought process as opposed to physical.”

O’Reilly, by contrast, was already comfortable in 2024, when he stood out on City’s pre-season tour of the United States: “We’ve done the same system since I was a baby so I do know what I’m doing there,” he told reporters at the time. “It’s the same philosophy from the academy to the first team. It’s just about finding the pockets and trying to play my game.”

He was talking about playing in holding midfield then, something Guardiola was keen to try out given O’Reilly’s height; the youngster, who first trained with the senior team five years ago, had always been an attacking midfielder with an eye for goal in his academy days, but his manager felt his size made him suitable for a deeper role.

What he is doing now, having initially made himself a mainstay in the team as an attacking left-back, is essentially an old-fashioned box-to-box role. And he has been doing it in some of City’s most demanding games of the season, like against Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool away, as well as the tense victory against Newcastle on Saturday, where he scored both of his side’s goals and spent the last 15 minutes playing as a target man.

“Nico gives us in the middle that physicality that we need,” Guardiola told TNT Sports afterwards. “He now plays in his position. He has always played that, he is so complete and so young.”

That kind of physicality has clearly always been important. But in this modern-day Premier League where winning duels is more important than ever thanks to the rise of man-to-man marking — something Guardiola’s assistant, Pep Lijnders, has said on the record — O’Reilly’s stature has helped him emerge as arguably the model City academy graduate, at least for right now.

“Normally, all the academy players are like Rico Lewis and Oscar Bobb,” Guardiola said, gesturing about those players’ size, during O’Reilly’s stand-out pre-season tour in 2024. “At least we have a (tall) guy like (Nico).”

In recent years, City had seemed to be the place where smaller, more technical players could buck the trend and thrive at the top level, as long as their ability and effort was good enough, but there has been a sudden shift in the game and both Bobb and Lewis no longer seem to fit the criteria at the Etihad Stadium.

Bobb left for Fulham in January for reasons beyond his size, but Guardiola has said, “I think the modern winger is like a (Leroy) Sane type, tall, long legs, incredibly fast one-against-one”, while Lewis has started three league games all season, and only one since August, with Guardiola highlighting how good he is when playing against teams who defend zonally, due to his ability to find pockets of space. Few teams defend zonally in the Premier League these days, though, and while Lewis has brought a lot to City in the past three years, he does not get much of a look-in at the moment.

O’Reilly himself, who made time to appear at a signing-on session for the club’s under-eights on Sunday and has been known to have a kickabout with that age group in the academy, says his move back to midfield has been a “quick transition”; he was put there in training ahead of City’s Carabao Cup game with Newcastle in January and since the Spurs game at the start of February he has been a mainstay.

His ability to instinctively know where to be to pick up loose balls is increasingly valuable, and was always the most underrated trait of City’s recent midfield greats like Rodri, Silva, Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne.

On Saturday, his first goal came partly due to the fact he was stationed high up alongside Erling Haaland when City were defending long goal kicks — despite his size, he was not asked to win the first header, but to stay high and mop up the second ball. From there, he broke with Haaland and Omar Marmoush, and slammed the ball into the net.

Nico O’Reilly and Erling Haaland are congratulated by Gianluigi Donnarumma (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

“I was there with Erling to try and get flick-ons and try to hold the ball up,” he told reporters when asked about his instructions. He also shed light on the ghosting run into the box for his second goal, a planted header from a Haaland cross.

“I used to come to the games here every week, seeing the likes of Gundogan and Bernardo, and all these players scoring goals, and also being in training and picking up from these players. I won’t say anyone individually, but yeah, there are a few (influences).”

After three busy transfer windows in a row, City have brought in players, like Semenyo and Guehi, with huge talents in their own right that nevertheless need to be reprogrammed for how Guardiola is choosing to combat this increasingly physical, direct Premier League.

City are effectively playing direct football in as controlled a manner as possible, and few players in the squad fit those profiles better than O’Reilly.