Man City have four contenders to be their most valuable player for 2025

Manchester City have had a mixed year but there have been plenty of important contributions over the course of the year.

Who has been Manchester City's best player this year? Normally the conversation talks title winners and dissects the pivotal moments of a trophy-winning campaign where Pep Guardiola's side have risen against all comers.

That has not been the case for 2025 at all after a crash of form for the team that started in the autumn of 2024 and left them struggling to save even the lowest of ambitions for the season. That was done, both transfer windows have been busy, and Guardiola ends this year in a much happier place than he was 12 months ago.

A lot of people are responsible for that but some contributions have been more important than others. As well as Rayan Cherki has started or the impact that Gianluigi Donnarumma has had, it feels like the most valuable players of 2025 at the Etihad have to have been those who have been there for all of it.

That has involved good and bad, and the four that have been chosen have certainly had ups and downs through the year. However, they all stand out for differing reasons as players that have been fundamental to the progress that City have made in 2025 after such a difficult start.

Nico Gonzalez

When he played as he did against Newcastle back in February, Guardiola compared him to a mini-Messi and fans dared to dream after a bumpy start to life at the club at Leyton Orient. Gonzalez helped City through a difficult spell between February and April but then fell out of favour and barely started towards the end of last season in the team that clinched Champions League football.

That continued into this season, but with Mateo Kovacic and Rodri injured Gonzalez has grown into his role and quietly become one of the most important players in the team. Perhaps not as a coincidence, once the Rodri attempted comebacks stopped Gonzalez came into his own and while he will welcome the return of the Ballon d'Or winner to give him some rest he has now made a case to remain in the team - there is no longer the dread that followed the team announcements when Rodri wasn't in the XI.

Erling Haaland

He was the first to admit that he could have done better last season and giving up that penalty in the FA Cup final won't have sat easily but he has hit the ground running this season and has managed over 30 goals in the calendar year - 34 with the three he scored in the Club World Cup. A strike against Al Ain was, remarkably, his first goal for City at a neutral ground and more importantly he has scored home and away against Real Madrid in 2025.

There is a danger of normalising the absurd number of goals Haaland scores in such a short time, and he ends 2025 just three away from moving up to fourth in City's all-time scoring charts after smashing Alan Shearer's record as the fastest to 100 Premier League goals. He has led from the front, and there has also been an improvement in his overall game as well as the extra responsibility of joining the leadership group (and becoming a YouTuber).

Bernardo Silva

And here come the pitchforks... Bernardo Silva unfairly became a symbol of the team decline last season when in reality he and Ilkay Gundogan were two of the only players who stayed fit while all around them fell. Guardiola saw enough of his Portuguese warrior to ask him to be his captain for the season and Silva saw it as his remit to reintroduce the standards into the dressing room that he felt had been lost.

The 31-year-old will never get the headlines and has had a few ropey games this season, but he also does a lot of unsung work and - more importantly - the team now play in his image. At the Emirates or the Bernabeu, even when the football wasn't brilliant the team scrapped and fought for every ball as if their lives depended on it and that is to the credit of their captain.

Nico O'Reilly

The breakout star in the second half of the season, O'Reilly's introduction from the bench in the second-half of an FA Cup quarter at Bournemouth changed the course for Guardiola. They found a new way of working as a team and City won six of the next seven games with the youngster in the team.

After a poor start to the 2025/26 campaign, Guardiola reverted to O'Reilly at left-back and he has already played over 2000 minutes - more than all but four players. What's more, the winning percentage when he starts is a jaw-dropping 85 per cent and that drops to 43 per cent when he doesn't.

He is still learning as a left-back but his impact on the team has been extraordinary.