A brief that outlived the manager
Pep Guardiola has left Manchester City. The instruction he handed the recruitment staff when he first walked in has not. Find me players who can dribble, he told them. A decade later, Enzo Maresca inherits an attack built around that one sentence.
Iliman Ndiaye is the newest name on the list. City closed the deal on Tuesday’s deadline, paying Everton around £65 million, £60m guaranteed with a further £5m tied to performance. The 26-year-old signed a five-year contract at the Etihad and leaves Merseyside with 21 goals from 74 appearances since arriving from Marseille in 2024. City had spent much of the window chasing Cody Gakpo. When that collapsed, they turned to Ndiaye and closed it inside a day.
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Three of the league’s top dribblers, one squad
The Opta numbers make the pattern hard to argue with. With Ndiaye in the building, City hold the Premier League’s top three from 2025-26 for dribble attempts: Jérémy Doku on 162, Antoine Semenyo on 144, Ndiaye on 136.
Look at completed dribbles and City own four of last season’s top eight. Doku finished on 84, Ndiaye 65, Semenyo 59, Rayan Cherki 51. Elliot Anderson, another summer arrival, sat just behind on 50 from close to half the minutes.
Doku was the odd one out in 2023, a Rennes winger nobody expected Guardiola to sign, questioned over his end product and his fit in a possession side. He turned into one of the division’s most effective one-v-one attackers. Cherki followed and had a strong first season in England. Semenyo came from Bournemouth in January. Ndiaye completes the set.
Why chaos suits them
City spent 23.4% of their build-up time last season facing a low block, the third-highest share in the Premier League. Compact defences rarely crack through patience alone. A dribbler can take one apart with a swivel of the hips.
The habit predates this summer. City ranked inside the Premier League’s top six for dribble attempts in four title-winning campaigns: 845 in 2020-21, 801 in 2018-19, 797 in 2017-18 and 782 in 2021-22. Guardiola himself once said the future of the sport would drift away from his possession ideology towards transitions. His successor now has the players to test that theory.
Maresca is unlikely to abandon the passing framework. What he has is four attackers who can beat a man without help, and that is a different problem for opponents to solve.
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