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Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has changed some of the players he uses most at the club this season after a busy transfer window
If you had to guess which player had featured the most for Manchester City this season, you might struggle without a headline giving it away. Tijjani Reijnders has provoked mixed reviews for his start to life at the Etihad, yet he has been seen more than any other player.
That fact underlines the level of change at the Etihad when a summer signing has been the most used by Pep Guardiola, and there are two other 2025 arrivals who are among the top ten most used. Gianluigi Donnarumma has shot up to seventh in the list and will surely climb higher barring injury, while January buy Nico Gonzalez is also in at eighth.
That adds a flavour of freshness to the City side, and also much-needed replacements from last season. Ederson, Ilkay Gundogan and Manu Akanji were 4th, 6th, and 8th on that list but all departed in the summer.
Some continuity in the list comes in Erling Haaland, Ruben Dias, and Bernardo Silva. All three feature in the top six so far this year, as they did in the last year, while Phil Foden also climbs up to fifth place from ninth place and Josko Gvardiol has dropped from top to ninth.
Otherwise, new entries are Nico O'Reilly (4th) and Jeremy Doku (10th) with Rico Lewis and Mateo Kovacic falling out of the top ten. Lewis hasn't started a league game since Tottenham in August and Kovacic hasn't played a single minute yet after Achilles surgery in the summer.
The players Guardiola has used the most has welcomed new faces into the team but has also quietly brought the age of the team now. From an average age of 26.9 last year for the starting core, that has now come down to 25.1.
That may not seem like much difference - age doesn't matter as much as who can kick the ball in the net or keep it out of the net - but given the manager's concerns last season about being overrun in midfield age does become an important factor and small changes can make big differences.
Part of Hugo Viana's remit when he came into the club in January to succeed Txiki Begiristain as sporting director in January was to bring down the collective age of a team who had grown old together. Gonzalez and Abdukodir Khusanov were brought in at the start of the year and Kevin De Bruyne was allowed to leave on a free transfer before the summer transfer window had opened.
Reijnders, at 27, will not dramatically bring any team averages down on his own and is one of the players, like Omar Marmoush, who have been brought in as established players looking to take the next step in their careers. Reijnders being six years younger than Gundogan in midfield could make a significant difference, his running helping the team even if radar for goal could have been better since the opening day.
City refreshing their team and squad may not be the biggest story around them this season, especially if Erling Haaland continues to score at an astonishing rate, but their transition under Guardiola and Viana is showing promise.
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