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Manchester City are looking to sign Antoine Semenyo in the January transfer window and have shown their strength.
Contrary to some perceptions, Manchester City like to stay quiet in the January transfer window. There is more value to be found in the summer window and Pep Guardiola prefers to finish the campaign with the same group of players that he started it with.
Antoine Semenyo is an opportunity that City and every other top club had to at least look at in the next weeks though. With a release clause around £65million taking away the possibility of an auction, there is so much to like about a 25-year-old homegrown star with years of Premier League experience at a good club who is currently the third top scorer in the division.
With a CV like that, even the teams that haven't been that interested in buying Semenyo in January haven't been able to say that outright. For those teams who are seriously keen, including City, the benefits of signing the player outweigh the potential disappointment of being beaten to him by a rival - just like Florian Wirtz did in summer.
As with Wirtz, Liverpool are one of the teams interested in Semenyo and one that City have to be wary of. They don't have the control in the transfer in the sense that it comes down to the player to decide where he thinks is the best place to go and he is not short of options.
City can at least be confident that they have to be seen as one of the best again though. When Wirtz opted for Liverpool in summer, there was panic among some Blues that there were suddenly more attractive choices for targets in what was a damning verdict on their difficult 2024/25 campaign.
Pep Guardiola was talking about getting the club back to where he wanted them to be, but the confidence in summer that it would happen was a fragile one. It peaked as City smashed Juventus in the Club World Cup and then troughed as they were turfed out of the competition by Al Hilal.
Six months on and those doubts have largely been erased. City's results have been excellent in the three months since they returned from the September international break and they head into 2026 in excellent positions in the Premier League, Champions League and Carabao Cup, and with the FA Cup still to get underway.
If Semenyo wants to win trophies, City have restored faith that they are capable of it with or without him. The Bournemouth star is also seeing this season that however long Guardiola sticks around for he is still capable of improving players in a short space of time.
City hope they have done enough to secure one of the best players in the league, but at the very least they have shown Semenyo the evidence that they didn't have for Wirtz in summer.
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