Man City’s Marc Guehi signing is a January masterclass

Robin Bairner

19 Jan 2026 03:10 CST
4 min read

Manchester City stand on the verge of their second major January transfer coup, with Marc Guehi poised to arrive from Crystal Palace in a dream scenario for Pep Guardiola’s side.

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While their Premier League rivals have stood still this month, City have been proactive, snapping up the two players their competitors really wanted.

Antoine Semenyo was first. The operation to secure the Bournemouth attacker was relatively straightforward as they simply paid his release fee to take him north. He has hit the ground running, with two goals and an assist in his first three matches.

Guehi, though, promises to be City’s January masterstroke. An agreement worth just £20 million (€23m), plus some limited bonuses, has been agreed with Crystal Palace for the England international centre-back, Sky Sports reports.

Heavily courted by Liverpool, the Etihad club moved decisively to secure the 25-year-old this month in the face of an injury crisis. Given this context, as well as the obvious unhappiness of Palace boss Oliver Glasner is seeing the player depart at this juncture of the season, City have done well to drive such a bargain.

“Selling our captain one day before a game, (I have) completely no understanding for this,” he told Sky Sports. “We are preparing, and then yesterday at 10.30am, I’m told our captain will be sold. So why not next week? Then we can play at least this game. It makes me really upset today.”

Putting City’s Guehi bargain in perspective

Real Madrid, remember, paid around €10m to Liverpool to sign Trent Alexander-Arnold a month early to allow him to play in their FIFA Club World Cup group stage games last summer.

For City to get a Premier League-proven defender for half a season for only double the price looks good business in this context.

And the decision to use their financial muscle to beat their competition only looks better when Guehi’s Estimated Transfer Value (ETV) is taken into account. This sits at €43.6m – close to twice the initial figure City are paying.

Guehi’s class is underlined by the fact that with less than six months of his contract remaining, he is still regarded as the world’s 12th most valuable ball playing defender.

Pep has learned from previous mistakes

It seems that Guardiola’s side have learned from their mistakes of last January, when they spent more than €200 million on Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez, Kodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis.

None of these players arrived with Premier League experience yet commanded huge fees, in part due to City’s need for signings. Of the quartet, none has really justified their enormous price tag, with only Nico, signed for €60m from Porto, even coming close.

This January’s rescue mission has been more circumspect. The deals have been smaller but the players have the capacity to make a bigger impact. It’s been smarter business.

The Guehi deal, in particular, is incredible. Not only have City found themselves an immediate centre-back upgrade who can slot straight into their plans for the second half of the season, but they have done so at an incredible price.

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