City’s loan kids Nmecha and Frimpong on right pathway

Lukas Nmecha and Jeremie Frimpong are just two of the 32 players Man City have loaned to other clubs to advance their development and pathway to the first team. Nmecha and Frimpong are experiencing contrasting fortunes at Wolfsburg and Celtic but City coaches believe both will benefit from their time away and go on to prove it when they next train under the watchful eye of Pep Guardiola.
Nmecha has received just 149 minutes of playing time at the Bundesliga club although Wolfsburg coach Oliver Glasner has stated the 20-year-old “will become very important in the next few weeks”.
Wolfsburg have a purchase option for the Germany Under-21 international, believed to be a figure of 11.5million euros.
But that does not necessarily mean his future lies away from the Etihad Stadium as this summer they triggered a buy-back clause in the deal that sold Spanish full-back Angelino to PSV Eindhoven to bring him back to Manchester.
And the fact that loan players are not be getting regular first-team appearances may not ultimately matter either as the experience of current first-team star Oleksandr Zinchenko at the Dutch club shows.
The Ukrainian spent a year on loan at PSV in 2017, and made just four Eredivisie starts, but has since won back-to-back Premier League titles with City.
Frimpong has followed a familiar path to Glasgow to play for Celtic, where City loanees Jason Denayer, Patrick Roberts and Daniel Arzani have gone before him.
The Netherlands Under-19 international made his debut in the 5-0 thrashing of Patrick Thistle in the Scottish League Cup on September 25.
The 18-year-old was handed his first league start in the 6-0 thumping of Ross County at Parkhead on October 19 and kept his place in the starting XI for the next league game against Aberdeen, which ended in a 4-0 victory for the Bhoys.
Keith Hill, who saw City’s next generation knock his Rochdale side out of the EFL Trophy last season, expects the club to dominate English football for a long time because of the deep foundations they have laid. “The infrastructure is incredible,” he said. “We seem to forget that in my lifetime as a manager and a player they were playing League One football. They have just ripped the rule book up and started again. “They are dominating English football and it won’t be long before they do the same to Europe. That is the next step. And it’s all to do with what they are putting in place. We’re not just talking first team – it’s six, seven, eight-year-old players. It’s magnificent. “They have the feeder clubs, a global franchise, and Pep is the leader of the football operation. He’s integral to the footballing ideology they have got which drips through the whole of the club.”