Oscar Bobb has suggested that a certain player at Manchester City is the strongest at the club.
Often, City’s technical brilliance is highlighted alongside Pep Guardiola’s tactical acumen when discussing their strengths.
However, Jose Mourinho pointed out that the team’s physicality is one of the main reasons why they won the Champions League last season.
When Pep Guardiola was appointed by Manchester City in 2016, they had one of the shortest teams in the Premier League; a rarity for a top team in England at the time.
Much like at Barcelona, where Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta were diminutive geniuses, he had the same physical dynamic at City with players like David Silva, Sergio Aguero and Raheem Sterling being some of his main men.
But since last season, the Sky Blues seemed to have purposefully signed physical imposing players and that policy has continued into last summer.
Oscar Bobb suggests one player is the strongest at Manchester City
Manchester City already had some notably strong players in their ranks like Kyle Walker, Rodri, Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake to name a few.
However, City went on to sign Erling Haaland and Manuel Akanji in the summer of 2022 and perhaps one of the reasons behind that was to bolster their team’s strength.
Last summer as well, Josko Gvardiol’s introduction has meant the English side have another imposing presence in their ranks.
Alongside Arsenal, who have William Saliba, Declan Rice, Gabriel Magalhaes and Ben White at their disposal, City might have the strongest team in the Premier League.
However, to pick the strongest player at the Etihad Stadium would be a challenging task.
But it seems like Bobb has hinted at an answer.
In a video with Football Manager [via TikTok], Oscar Bobb was asked to guess the player at Manchester City with the highest ‘strength’ attribute in the game and he named Manuel Akanji.
Fair guess from Oscar Bobb by naming Manuel Akanji
In all fairness to Oscar Bobb, if he really does think Manuel Akanji is the strongest player at Manchester City, there is no reason why that should be deemed necessarily incorrect.
Much like Kyle Walker, the £15 million man is quite broad and yet, in a footballing sense, the Swiss defender tends to keep his balance, making him quite dominant in duels.
For instance, in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final, it took Akanji to merely nudge Rodrygo for him to lose his balance and fall to the floor.
Considering Oscar Bobb often plays out wide, perhaps he went toe-to-toe with Manuel Akanji in training and realised just how strong he is.
