Manchester City aren’t short of centre-backs with Ruben Dias, John Stones, Aymeric Laporte and Nathan Ake at their disposal, so Taylor Harwood-Bellis looks unlikely to break into the first-team next season.
The 20-year-old has yet to reach dougle figures for appearances at the Etihad Stadium and Simon Bajkowski of the Manchester Evening News says City are ‘open’ to him ‘leaving’ this summer.
Harwood-Bellis rose from the youth ranks to the first-team in 2019/20, making 21 appearances for the U18s, 10 appearances for the U19s, 40 appearances for the U23s and eight appearances at senior level. But the England U21 international’s inability to nail down a regular spot led to him being loaned out.
Harwood-Bellis was sent out to Blackburn Rovers (February 2021 – May 2021) last season and made 19 appearances across the board. He spent the first half of this campaign at RSC Anderlecht (July 2021 – January 2022) and featured 19 times before switching to Stoke (January 2022 – present) in the winter transfer window.
The 20-year-old has gone on to make 19 appearances for the Potters but doesn’t appear to have done enough in the Championship to convince Pep Guardiola that he’s worth keeping – his last City outing came in January 2021’s FA Cup win over Cheltenham Town. Is this one example of stiff competition closing the door for a promising youngster?
In other news, Man City ‘expect to sell’ 24 y/o who hasn’t made an appearance for five years