Speaking recently on The Athletic’s Why Always Us? podcast, Manchester City correspondent, Sam Lee, discussed the club’s reported interest in Lyon midfielder, Houssem Aouar.
Aouar, who is an academy product of Lyon, has so far gone on to make 137 appearances for the club, scoring 24 goals and providing 27 assists.
Last season, the 22-year-old highly impressed for Lyon despite the club’s league struggles, as he scored three goals and provided four assists over his 25 appearances in Ligue 1, averaging a WhoScored match rating of 7.02.
The midfielder also impressed throughout the club’s run to the semi-finals of the Champions League, scoring one goal and providing a further four assists, as well as averaging a WhoScored match rating of 7.55 over his eight appearances in the competition.
As a result of these performances, there have been rumours that Manchester City are interested in making a move for the £44.55 million-rated man this summer, however, speaking recently on the Why Always Us? podcast, Lee poured cold water over these rumours.
He said: “Everyone at the moment seems to want City to sign Houssem Aouar from Lyon. None of the English journalists are reporting on it because the English journalists, including myself, have been told that it’s not going to happen, but there’s a load of reports overseas that City are interested.
“In fact, the strangest thing about this is there’s not so much reports overseas driving this one. It’s not like an Italian media situation. It’s the fact that there’s a load of ITKs on forums and Twitter, people saying ‘I know so and so who’s this and that’, but there’s quite a few people around City saying ‘the Houssem Aouar deal has been sorted out for a long time, it’s going be announced after the Champions League’ – well, both teams have been out of it for a few days now, so if that is true, we’ll soon see.”
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TIF Thoughts…
So, from Lee’s comments, it would appear as if, contrary to reports, he has been told that Aouar will not be joining Manchester City, despite ‘people around City’ saying that the deal will be announced shortly.
Either way, we will soon find out who is correct.