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Man City could still sign 19 y/o despite recent ‘bombshell news’ [Opinion]

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Pep Guardiola hopes to sign Jude Bellingham from Borussia Dortmund this summer, but James Ducker of the Telegraph says that Manchester City might have legal trouble due to the recent charges levied at the club.

City have been accused of inflating their income and deflating their expenditure while being secretive about payments made to staff, so they could incur serious punishment if found guilty.

A transfer embargo is one of many consequences and would kill their hopes of signing Bellingham, but the outcome of this investigation is years away. Pavitt says so himself, so their pursuit of the 19-year-old won’t be affected.

It’s true that City might be prevented from signing players as punishment for a guilty verdict, but this case will take a long time to be resolved as the Sky Blues are proclaiming their innocence and have an expensive legal team ready to fight.

Bellingham is exactly what Guardiola is looking for, being a goalscoring midfielder (4 goals and 4 assists in 18 Bundesliga games) who is effective in both boxes (4.2 turnovers per game, 1 chance created per game and 2.1 dribbles per game), so City can’t afford to have their transfer activity thwarted this summer.

In fact, the charges could force Guardiola to get all his business done for the next couple of transfer windows in case an embargo is placed on the club in the future.

In other news, Alan Hutton explains why ‘exceptional’ James Maddison could avoid Man City

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He joined from Newcastle in 2000 and left to join FC Sochaux in 2003

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Sports journalist who is an avid football fan, enjoys debunking transfer rumours, loves to write pieces about players out in the cold and takes a large amount of pride getting a predicted XI 100% correct.