Manchester City Prepare for Life After Rodri: Alexis Mac Allister on the Radar
Manchester City are bracing for life after Rodri. And that reality is starting to bite.
With the Spaniard edging towards a move to Barcelona, City’s recruitment team have shifted into full contingency mode, and one of the names now being discussed behind closed doors is a striking one: Liverpool’s Alexis Mac Allister.
Rodri’s shadow and a £55m exit
Rodri’s influence at the Etihad has been so vast that even entertaining his departure feels like a seismic moment. Yet City are preparing for exactly that. The World Cup-winning midfielder is finalising a switch to Camp Nou, with reports indicating a £55 million package is close to being agreed and could be wrapped up in the coming days.
For Enzo Maresca, just settling into the job, it is a brutal first test. Replacing the man who has been the metronome and safety net of City’s dominance is not a simple recruitment exercise; it is a structural rebuild of the midfield.
City have not waited to act. Elliot Anderson has already arrived for £116m, a bold early statement in the window and a sign that the club are willing to spend aggressively to reshape Maresca’s engine room.
Bouaddi now, but experience still needed
The next piece of that rebuild may be Ayyoub Bouaddi. Negotiations with Lille are ongoing for the highly rated Moroccan teenager, and personal terms are already understood to be in place. City see him as a long-term project, a talent to mould rather than an instant Rodri replacement.
That is where the dilemma lies. Bouaddi brings promise, not the hardened assurance of a player who can walk straight into a title-chasing side and dictate games from day one. Inside the club, there is a clear sense that more experience is needed at the base of midfield.
That need has led to internal conversations about Mac Allister and whether he could anchor Maresca’s system.
Mac Allister on City’s shortlist
Mac Allister is moving into the final two years of his Liverpool contract. Since joining from Brighton in 2023, he has become a regular in the Liverpool XI, trusted in multiple roles and often tasked with knitting together a midfield that has been rebuilt on the fly.
His form dipped during a turbulent campaign that saw Liverpool slide to a fifth-place finish, and he faced criticism and calls to be dropped during the run-in. Yet his standing inside the game remains high. Scouts still point to his positional intelligence, his tactical discipline and his ability to operate as a pivot at elite level.
Those qualities helped power Argentina’s 2022 World Cup triumph and underpinned Liverpool’s title-winning 2024/25 season, where he emerged as a key figure in their midfield balance.
For City, that profile is gold: a Premier League-proven operator, schooled in high-intensity football, who understands complex positional play and could, in theory, adapt to Maresca’s demands without a long bedding-in period.
Transfer specialist Ben Jacobs has lifted the lid on where the idea currently stands inside the Etihad.
“I know internally Alexis McAllister has been mentioned, but there's been no contact yet, or developments with Liverpool. So that's just more part of a shortlisting process than anything to get excited about,” he told talkSPORT.
So Mac Allister is not a live negotiation. Not yet. He is a name on a list, not a player on a plane.
Maresca’s ideal world and City’s reality
Maresca’s taste in midfielders is no mystery. He likes control, bravery on the ball and players who can manipulate tempo as well as space. Unsurprisingly, some of the names linked mirror that profile.
Enzo Fernandez, whom Maresca worked with at Chelsea, is one such option. Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton is another, his rise in south London catching the eye across the division.
“Some people have mentioned Adam Wharton to me as well,” Jacobs added. “So possibly in a perfect world, if Maresca had his say, he might choose to move for Enzo Fernandez. We can't entirely discount it, but the price is a massive stumbling block. And at the moment, City's focus is on trying to get Bouaddi over the line.”
That is the tension at City right now: the manager’s ideal targets versus the financial and negotiating realities of the market. Fernandez would command an enormous fee. Wharton will not come cheap either, with Palace under no pressure to sell.
Mac Allister, with two years left on his deal, sits in a slightly different bracket. Still expensive, still complicated, but not entirely beyond the realms of possibility.
Liverpool’s dilemma
For Liverpool, the idea of losing Mac Allister to City is almost unthinkable. He was central to their most recent title win, scoring five league goals from midfield and earning a place in the PFA Team of the Year. That recognition underlined how highly his peers rate him, even as outside criticism grew during Liverpool’s late-season slump.
The numbers behind his performances remain strong, and his tactical intelligence has been repeatedly highlighted by analysts across the league. He reads danger, keeps the ball moving, and offers the kind of versatility managers crave.
All of which makes one question loom large: would Liverpool even pick up the phone if City called?
Selling a key midfielder to a direct title rival is not just a football decision; it is a statement of ambition, or lack of it. The Anfield hierarchy would face an enormous backlash if they sanctioned such a move without a watertight plan to replace him.
For now, City’s interest sits in the realm of internal debate and shortlists. Rodri’s exit, Bouaddi’s potential arrival, the manager’s preferences, the market’s inflated prices – all of it feeds into a puzzle that has yet to click into place.
But if City do decide that Mac Allister is the man to step into Rodri’s role, the next move will not just shape their midfield. It could redraw the battle lines at the top of English football.
