Transfer strategy shift, Hugo Viana impact, loan question - inside Man City January window

A look at Manchester City's January transfer window in what turned out to be a very busy month for Hugo Viana and Pep Guardiola

It may have been an accident, but as Rodri was being substituted at Tottenham he took off the captain's armband he had inherited minutes earlier from Bernardo Silva and handed it to Marc Guehi. Erling Haaland was still on the pitch, and Guehi passed it onto his defensive teammate Nico O'Reilly, but everyone at Manchester City has been taken with the composure of their new signing.

Apart from when he was getting whacked in the back of the leg by Dominic Solanke, Guehi has been a calming presence in a City backline that needed it. Pep Guardiola compared him to Ruben Dias after just two training sessions and other players have likened him to their captain Silva.

There are no metrics to measure it, but Guardiola loves players who can elevate others and the early signs are that Guehi has that in his game. It should help City even more when Dias does return, but the important point from this January window is that it reduces the impact of Dias missing.

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If last year saw exceptional and uncharacteristic spending in the winter window, they also stuck hard to their principles of not wanting to panic buy. Many of the purchases were long-term investments with little short-term benefit, while even the experienced players came form foreign leagues with no guarantee they would settle immediately in England.

And while the feeling was that they new signings would be helped once City's injury problems eased, 12 months on they were in exactly the same position. They needed defensive and attacking reinforcement that could make an instant impact, and so Hugo Viana pivoted, seizing the opportunities offered by Guehi's contract expiring and Antoine Semenyo's release clause to strike two deals ahead of rivals.

It has cost City £82.5m and the wages are sizable, yet when you see what they have both already offered the value already seems to be there; there is also the satisfaction for the Blues that top targets are still picking them over Premier League rivals despite the disappointment of last season. Semenyo scored his fourth goal in as many games at Tottenham and has the hunger and ambition to be better.

"I was very quiet about it. Let’s just say that. I was praying a lot, just making sure that I made the right decision and this was the right decision," he said on Sunday when asked about his January. "The environment, first of all, is a very important thing. Every day coming in, you want to make sure the environment is healthy with top coaches and top players. That’s what drew me here.

"I’m definitely enjoying it. I’m in a system that allows me to get through on goal and shoot in the box. That’s what I want as a striker or winger. I’m enjoying it."

If last January felt like a salvage job and didn't do much to take the burden off the existing squad - Omar Marmoush was the only player to be used consistently for the rest of that campaign - this month the squad have felt two players come in that will challenge them and increase the competition. It should work very well if and when the injury situation recovers, but until then it is enough to keep City afloat; Semenyo, for instance, has surely helped City to the brink of a Carabao Cup final they may not have reached otherwise.

Another player to have excelled in that Newcastle game was Max Alleyne, starting his third game in a week after being hastily recalled from Watford. The young defender had a week to forget against United and Bodo/Glimt, but if you shouldn't get carried away by his start at City neither should you get too down about what came next.

Alleyne's recall, and other moves from City in the January window, hint at Viana potentially looking to change one of the long-held transfer rules at the club. For years, it was the case that City would keep their brightest prospects close to Guardiola and a loan was seen as a sign that you would not get a chance at the Etihad.

James McAtee returned after two years at Sheffield United determined to break that mould last season, but was sold on to Nottingham Forest in the summer after being overlooked. In 10 years of Guardiola, Alex Zinchenko remains the only outlier.

Alleyne has threatened to buck that trend though, and as he has come back from Watford another highly-rated defender, Stephen Mfuni, has headed to Vicarage Road. Mfuni had only been there a few days before the manager left, while Divine Mukasa has completed a loan to struggling Leicester City who are also without a manager.

City like the Championship to develop - it is why they sent Sverre Nypan there but he wasn't able to get game time at Middlesbrough - yet the moves for Mfuni and Mukasa do not feel like they would have happened as recently as last season. The loans are less about finding the perfect environment and more about challenging the players to adapt and testing if they have the mentality to make their football talents shine in a real world where, to quote Guardiola, they are no longer playing in front of '10 people' but tens of thousands that could be hostile.

They will be interesting to keep an eye on and see if City are changing their view on loaning out their biggest prospects. As far as the first team go, two consecutive years of January spending, even if for different reasons, could be the beginning of a trend; if the game is changing, City want to be at the forefront of it.

For now though, it is the summer that remains the biggest factor in how well the season goes and all attention turns fully to that in what will be Viana's third window running the show.