Jeremy Doku Signs New Deal with Manchester City
Jeremy Doku has tied his future to Manchester City, and the message from the Etihad is clear: the champions are backing youth, not panic.
The Belgium winger has agreed a new deal to 2031, the latest core piece locked in as City reshape themselves after Pep Guardiola. Doku only arrived from Rennes in 2023 for £55.4m, but after 48 appearances, eight goals and a major role in last season’s FA Cup and Carabao Cup double, the club has moved quickly to secure him long term. An official announcement is expected next week, yet inside City the decision has been treated as a formality for weeks.
Doku becomes the fourth player this summer to commit fresh terms, following Phil Foden, Josko Gvardiol and Abdukodir Khusanov. One by one, the spine of the next City side is being nailed down.
Gonzalez digs in for his place
Not everyone has enjoyed the same clarity. Nico Gonzalez, signed from Porto for £50m last January, has lived a more stop-start existence in Manchester.
The 24-year-old midfielder featured 41 times in all competitions last season and delivered one of the defining moments of the campaign, smashing in a spectacular winner in the FA Cup semi-final against Southampton. Yet he never fully escaped the “in and out” label, drifting in and out of the starting XI as Guardiola rotated heavily.
That kind of profile usually sparks transfer noise around a club of City’s size, and it did. But Gonzalez has shut that down himself.
“I’m happy here,” he said when asked about his future. “I don’t want to leave and I think the club wants me to stay. I haven’t seen anything but I’m happy here.
“When I play I think I do a really good job. A good example was the semi-final of the FA Cup when I did a good match. Every chance I got, I tried my best.
“The final of the FA Cup I was out but we won so it was an amazing day for me. If we win, I’m happy. My dream is to win trophies.
“If I don’t play any matches and we win the Champions League next year, I will be so happy.”
Those are not the words of a player angling for the exit. They are the words of a squad man prepared to scrap for minutes in a dressing room that expects silverware every year.
So far this pre-season, Gonzalez has featured in both friendlies, against Inter Milan and a K-League XI in South Korea. He is not being frozen out. He is being tested.
One major signing, and a lot of noise
For all the contract activity, City’s incoming business has been strikingly quiet. Approaching the second week of August, Enzo Maresca has just one new senior signing who looks ready to walk straight into his first XI: Elliot Anderson.
The England international, signed from Nottingham Forest for a club-record £116m, arrives as the obvious successor to Bernardo Silva, who left at the end of his contract and joined Real Madrid. Anderson’s fee underlines the scale of the rebuild. City have not flooded the market; they have picked a single, expensive solution for a major vacancy.
Around that, the moves have been more subtle. Teenage winger Jeremy Monga has come in from Leicester and is likely to start in the academy. Goalkeeper Pierce Charles and winger Mathys Detourbet have both been sent straight out on loan to gain experience elsewhere.
Maresca has been candid. Speaking on Tuesday, he confirmed that director of football Hugo Viana and chief executive Ferran Soriano had flown to South Korea, where City are based for pre-season, and admitted “we need to something” in the transfer market. The work is ongoing, not finished.
Inside the club, though, there is no sign of alarm. Senior figures describe themselves as “relaxed” and stress their “trust” in the long-term plan. They point to Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guehi as proof of that strategy: both were long-term targets, both were secured in January in deals originally earmarked for this summer, and both have already made a positive impact.
That early business has taken some of the urgency out of this window. So has the age profile of the squad. City view this group as “young” and “exciting”, a team that already delivered both domestic cups last season and is still growing. Brazilian defender Vitor Reis, 20, has returned from a season-long loan at Girona and is expected to be part of the first-team set-up.
Big decisions still to come
The calm at board level does not mean the hard choices are over. Far from it.
Rodri, the midfield metronome and arguably the most irreplaceable player in the squad, has yet to sign a new contract. His situation is being watched closely in Spain, with both Real Madrid and Barcelona now showing interest. City do not want to lose him. They also know his value has never been higher.
Tijjani Reijnders, another midfielder, looks more likely to move on, with Nottingham Forest among the clubs keen on him. On the flanks, Savinho is open to leaving, with Tottenham exploring a move, although no deal has materialised so far.
City’s stance is straightforward: if someone goes, someone comes in. The plan is to replace departures, not strip the squad bare.
Targets are already on the table. There is interest in Chelsea’s Pedro Neto, while talks continue over Lille’s Moroccan midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi and Marseille goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli. None of those deals is over the line yet, but the names show where City want to strengthen: wide, in midfield, and in goal.
So the picture at the Etihad is a curious one. A new manager. A record signing. A core of young stars tied down to long contracts. A transfer market that has yet to fully catch fire.
And over it all, a sense of quiet certainty that this is evolution, not upheaval. The real question now is whether that calm holds when the season starts and the first pressure points arrive.
