Man City’s unsung hero in winning streak is making their David Alaba transfer decision easy – Joe Bray

Put together your self, the David Alaba rumours are coming.

Whether or not to Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Actual Madrid or any huge membership round Europe, anticipate the Austrian to be heralded as the answer to stricken defences and named as the final word free switch this summer season.

With Alaba, 28, anticipated to substantiate he’ll go away Bayern Munich, the switch hearsay mill will go into overdrive, and Metropolis’s title can be proper on the forefront of the hypothesis.

Metropolis have been linked with Alaba for the final two summers, with the versatile defender having labored beneath Pep Guardiola on the Allianz Enviornment and – on paper at the least – providing an skilled resolution to their left-back woes.

With Benjamin Mendy solely beginning within the FA Cup because the New 12 months, the Frenchman appears as soon as once more to have fallen out of favour with Guardiola. Since becoming a member of Metropolis 4 and a half years in the past, Mendy has solely made 65 appearances. He is missed practically double that quantity, 123, with accidents.

His present absence is strictly form-related, with the closest he has come to Premier League motion coming when he is warming up on the sidelines in every of their final 11 league outings. He hasn’t performed a minute of high flight motion because the final time Metropolis dropped factors again in the course of December.

A part of that’s because of the type of gamers forward of him. Joao Cancelo and Aymeric Laporte have stuffed in at left-back, however they each have most popular positions additional alongside the again line. As a substitute, it has been Oleksandr Zinchenko who has been dependable at left-back, stopping wingers like Mo Salah, Heung-min Son, Marcus Rashford and Hakim Ziyech of their tracks in latest weeks.

Zinchenko has been a formidable utility choice at left-back prior to now, however has then dropped again right into a fringe position when Mendy or Cancelo have been match. Now, he is taking his probability and conserving his place with some stable performances. It additionally helps that he can mirror Cancelo’s position from right-back of coming into midfield when Metropolis are in possession.

In truth, of all gamers to have featured greater than 10 occasions for Metropolis, Zinchenko possesses the best win price within the membership’s historical past – in keeping with blues statisticians StatCity on Twitter, Metropolis had gained 87 per cent of all video games he had performed in earlier than the win over Spurs (which Metropolis additionally gained!).

With Laporte coming again however discovering central defence sport time restricted, he could discover himself pushing out to the left extra usually both in a again three or again 4. Zinchenko has proved an integral cog of Metropolis’s 16-game successful run, that includes 11 occasions, and there’s additionally Nathan Ake to return so as to add versatility of his personal throughout left-back and centre-back.

That is earlier than Mendy could or will not be given one other probability.

So when Alaba is inevitably linked to Metropolis within the coming months, they need to keep away from the temptation of signing a Champions League winner on a free switch. Due to Zinchenko, left-back is turning into much less and fewer of a precedence.