Nico O'Reilly has been the surprise package on the Manchester City summer tour and Pep Guardiola has been impressed
If Oscar Bobb was the standout player in Manchester City's pre-season, Nico O'Reilly was the breakthrough.
"Last season was a real disappointment for him because he came off the back of finishing the previous season very strongly, the standout player in the successful Under-18s team and then never got going because he was out for so long," explained Under-21s coach Ben Wilkinson. "He played five or six games but it was a really difficult year.
"He's incredibly bright tactically and if you give him lots of different jobs he's very accomplished in all of them. His technical level is very high and over the last year or two his physicality has come and he's a big lad. In a sign of how seriously he is taking it, Guardiola played O'Reilly alongside Mateo Kovacic at Wembley against United. It wasn't the best the teenager has looked this summer, although there was more effusive praise for him afterwards from the coach with the suggestion that he has done nothing to upset his chances of further first-team involvement.
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O'Reilly has been used as an attacking midfielder as Foden was in the academy, playing higher than he has been used by Guardiola this summer. However, his intelligence in being able to make a number of positions work could help rather than hinder him in his bid to stay part of City's first team squad.
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