After having had to abort their pursuit of Declan Rice, Manchester City could now be in danger of missing out on a summer transfer move for Celta Vigo’s Gabri Veiga.
The Sky Blues’ £90m bid for Rice was rejected earlier this week, resulting in Pep Guardiola’s side pulling out of the race to sign the Englishman and leaving Arsenal as the frontrunners to secure a deal for him.
Subsequently it was reported that the Manchester club had joined Chelsea and Liverpool to sign Veiga from Celta Vigo and lightning could be about to strike twice in the same place for the recently-crowned European champions as a recent report from the Evening Standard claims that Chelsea are also gearing up to make a move to sign Veiga if they are able to show Mason Mount the exit in this transfer window.
The 21-year-old Veiga has now made 55 senior appearances for the Spanish club across all competitions, after having having worked his way through the youth ranks at Celta,.
The promising young midfielder scored 11 goals in 36 La Liga appearances last season, two of which came against Barcelona in the final game of the campaign where Celta beat Xavi’s side 2-1. He has more league goals to his name last season than the likes of Vinicius Junior (10), Raphinha (7) and Ousmane Dembele (5), which easily explains why the Spaniard has popped up on the radar of some of England’s top clubs.
Besides pulling out of the race to sign Rice, the Manchester club will also be without club captain Ilkay Gundogan next season as he is already making a beeline to join Barcelona as a free agent. Hence despite havinh brought in Mateo Kovaic, making a a move for someone like Veiga would indeed be the next suitable next step in this window for the Cityzens.
One would hence expect the Cityzens to pull out all stops to secure the signature of Veiga as soon as possible – that is if they don’t want history to repeat itself.