Away from the extremes of social media, one of Manchester City’s January signings has had a difficult start to his new club.
Jude Bellingham central midfield of Real Madrid and England and Abdukodir Khusanov centre-back of Manchester City and Uzbekistán compete for the ball during the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 League Knockout Play-off second leg match between Real Madrid C.F. and Manchester City at on February 19, 2025 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Manchester City have seen the good, the bad and the ugly from their £33.5m January signing so far. But it depends on who you ask as to how good he really is.
Arriving amid a desperation for central defensive reinforcements, Abdukodir Khusanov was not a typical City signing. It felt more like a City Football Group addition – young, raw, full of potential. But ready for the Premier League straight away? Probably not.
But Pep Guardiola has bemoaned frequent injuries to his four senior centre-backs all season and has only had all of those available for one game all campaign. By half-time, Manu Akanji was off injured in that false dawn and John Stones has followed him with Ruben Dias then failing to make the next game.
Khusanov’s start couldn’t have gone much worse. A weak back-pass allowed Chelsea to score within two minutes of his daunting debut and he was carded 90 seconds later. His substitution just after half-time completed all the hallmarks of an all-timer of a nightmare debut.
So of course there are dozens of clips of Khusanov chasing those world-class talents. In Madrid, Mbappe and Vinicius preyed on him as they dismantled City, and there were mistakes, too against Liverpool. He will struggle to shake the Chelsea error, even if Guardiola and his teammates have rallied around him.
But that tough start has seen another interesting phenomenon, particularly on social media.
At one point in Madrid, Khusanov held off Vinicius one-on-one to stop an attack. On Sunday, he sensed danger and raced from the edge of the box to the near post to slide in and block a goalbound shot. Guardiola praised him for keeping Isak anonymous while the manager also joked he was ‘too aggressive’ at times.
If you were to search his name on X, you would see clips and the superlative captions and believe Khusanov is the best defender City have ever signed.
He deserves immense credit, of course, for bouncing back from the first four minutes against Chelsea, and it’s obvious to see why City signed him. Those flashes of pace, strength and recovery speak to his mentality to win every duel regardless of how the last one went. It’s the same mindset that puts Erling Haaland apart from his peers.
He won possession more than anyone else in the Premier League this weekend, despite City’s struggles vs Liverpool and Guardiola spoke of the young starting line up as the future of the club.