Manchester City are adding a trio of academy players to their squad after they impressed Enzo Maresca in pre-season. Ryan McAidoo, Kaden Braithwaite and Floyd Samba will all be part of the first team set-up to help boost competition in the group.
Three academy players promoted
Maresca explained last week that the best path for McAidoo would be to stick around the senior side rather than going out on loan, and the Manchester Evening News reported this week that Braithwaite had been kept up with the first team after impressing on the summer tour to Asia. It can now be confirmed that midfielder Floyd Samba, a 17-year-old who scored in the FA Youth Cup final win over United in May, will also train regularly with Maresca.
Squad numbers and departures
Those three, and potentially Jeremy Monga - the £10m signing from Leicester this summer - will add to a squad that Maresca is looking to total between 20 and 22 senior outfield players. Having been set the task of continuing City's competitiveness across all four competitions, those are the numbers Maresca wants.
City have work to do in the final days of the window to reach that tally following the departures of Rodri, Tijjani Reijnders and Savinho in the last week. There are currently 20 outfield players in the squad, although that number includes Omar Marmoush, Jack Grealish, Rico Lewis and Claudio Echeverri and most if not all of those could leave the club in the next fortnight either on loans or permanent deals.
Maresca on adaptation
"They are working very good. Since day one the attitude has been very good," Maresca said of his players. "For them it is not easy. When you work with the same person every day then change, it changes everything. I am an actor and I work with the same director, and we make movies for 10 years."
"Suddenly the director changes, as the actor I'm still thinking in the same way as I was with the previous director but now the director is new so I need to adapt. It's complicated, it's not easy. I'm saying it's a contest. It's not an excuse but it requires a little bit of time, but we need to compete as soon as possible."
