Pep Guardiola has said that he’s been so impressed by one particular Manchester City player this season.
The Manchester club are approaching the end of another Premier League campaign, one that could see them being crowned league champions for a fourth time in a row.
With the squad having had some big changes made to it during the previous summer transfer window with certain players moving in and out of the club, the manager has pinpointed one fairly new arrival that he has been particularly impressed by this season.
Guardiola says recent Man City arrival has had a really good season
Speaking in his latest press conference ahead of City’s away match against Fulham, Guardiola had this to say when asked to share his assessment of Mateo Kovacic’s debut season with the Manchester club.
He said: “He played really, really, really well. When he plays, because we play in a certain we, he was really good.
“His contribution, especially in the last games was massively important, he changed the games. In that terms, he’s really, really good.”
The Blues spent £30m to sign the midfielder from fellow Premier League side Chelsea last summer.
Since then, the 30-year-old has featured in 42 games for City in all competitions, starting 27 of them.
Across those 42 games, Kovacic has chipped in with three goals and one assist.
Kovacic has shown his quality for City in the Premier League
With 27 Premier League games under his belt for the Citizens, the Croatian has shown how capable he is when it comes to passing the ball around the pitch accurately.
Specifically, out of the 1350 passes he’s attempted, 1265 of them have been completed, giving Kovacic a passing accuracy percentage of 93.7%, the third-highest in the entire league, leaving only Thiago Silva (94.8%) and Micky van de Ven (94.6%) with higher ones.
In recent weeks, the midfielder has completed the full 90 minutes in three out of City’s four previous Premier League games, which shows how much Guardiola sees him as a key figure for the team, particularly in such a crucial stage of the campaign.
Moving forward, if Kovacic plays a big role in City’s final three league games of the season and helps them win the title, this will undoubtedly be seen as being a successful debut season for the former Chelsea star.