Part of the reason Nathan Ake is thriving at Manchester City this season is his selective negativity.
If he were to see a tweet saying that he should have stayed at Bournemouth — and there have been few of those from disgruntled supporters in the past couple of seasons — it would not bother him at all.
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If he were to be named player of the match for City, though, he would be chasing the club’s analysts and his personal team to highlight all the bad bits — so he can study them and improve.
Ake had another fine game against Newcastle United on Saturday, six weeks on from Pep Guardiola’s declaration that “without Nathan right now, we cannot play good”.
Naturally, he was named on the bench for the next game, a 3-0 win over Wolves, but the 28-year-old is a regular in the City team these days, and has been their most reliable defender since the start of the season in terms of availability and performance.
He has started 16 Premier League games this season, having managed 19 across the previous two seasons combined. Among those are big games at Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea.
“What a season he’s playing,” Guardiola said in January after City beat Arsenal in the FA Cup thanks to Ake’s goal. “He controlled one of the toughest opponents in the Premier League — Bukayo Saka is having an incredible moment. He’s really good in duels in the box, set pieces, defending the far post. An exceptionally lovely guy. Last season, when he wasn’t playing, he never complained once and always was really good.”
Since Joao Cancelo left in January, Ake has thrived in a hybrid centre-back/left-back role, which makes sense given he was splitting his time between those two separate functions in the first part of the season.
Those close to him and Guardiola’s coaching staff feel it is simply a case of things that he has been doing since day one finally falling into place. If one thing has changed, it is a belief that he now fully belongs at City.
Ake scores the only goal of the game as Manchester City beat Arsenal in the FA Cup in January (Photo: Oli Scarf/AFP via Getty Images)His use of the ball has improved but one of the things he has learned most from Guardiola is much more simple than might be expected: if in doubt, get rid of it. He and Ruben Dias are known to appreciate that, with the manager’s full blessing.
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Ake signed for the club from Bournemouth in August 2020, a process made more difficult by the fact that Manchester had been placed in the third tier of the government’s COVID-19 restrictions, meaning rules on social gatherings were stricter than in most other parts of the country.
His first season was played behind closed doors and City struggled in the early months: a bruising 5-2 home defeat to Leicester City was hard to take for Ake individually and then hamstring injuries limited him to six starts in the remaining 34 league games.
Last season, he struggled with coming in and out of the team. After starting the first Premier League game of the season, he stayed on the bench for the next three, then he played the full 90 minutes followed by two games on the bench, then another start and another three games on the bench.
That continued basically all season and he only started back-to-back league games once — and then he missed the next three, just like before. It made the process of adapting his game to City — which generally takes players at least a year to do — even harder. He had been used to doing more defending than anything else at Bournemouth but, when afforded the chance to play, was often in possession in the opposition half.
Ake’s lack of game time led to an opportunistic approach from Chelsea last summer, a chance for the Dutchman to rejoin the club he signed for at the age of 15.
He had admirers at Chelsea from his time there. Former coach Thomas Tuchel was a fan and the Londoners’ new owners, as has been reported recently, view City — the club setup and the squad itself — as something of a benchmark, so were especially open to signing their players.
But neither City nor Ake wanted any deal to drag on through pre-season and possibly the start of the season proper, so all parties decided to end talks.
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Ake, even before this season, had always loved being at City and, in particular, working with Guardiola, so when the chance of a return to Chelsea came and went, it was not a major problem. That is not unusual at City — some of his team-mates have eyed moves in recent years only to stay and get on with the job — but it is no guarantee in football.
Now, given how much game time he has had in recent months and how well he has been playing, a transfer is not on the agenda.
It is hard to imagine Ake devoting much time to those thoughts anyway; he does indeed analyse every match in full, focusing specifically on things he has done badly.
Like Dias, he is one of the first to arrive at the training ground in the morning and will continue working on his game and his body after others have gone, and then at home. Tardiness is hard to paint as a positive trait but if media duties, for example, get pushed back into the late afternoon, it is because he is going through his post-training routine.
That can include time in the cryotherapy chamber when needed, but always a series of stretches designed to aid recovery from the session just gone and prepare for the one coming up.
“He will do anything that could give him an extra 0.5 per cent advantage,” says one source close to the squad, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect their position.
He is close to Dias and Manuel Akanji, and City’s group of centre-backs, also including John Stones and Aymeric Laporte, are pretty tight-knit. Beyond those, he is especially close with Kevin De Bruyne from their time together at Chelsea. Their wives are friends, too, and they live close by.
“Not one person in the locker room… maybe… ah, I don’t think so… nobody is not happy for him,” Guardiola said after City’s FA Cup victory over Arsenal, a line most famous for the Catalan’s seeming hesitation at the thought that Cancelo, who had lost his place at left-back to Ake, might not actually be too pleased.
But Guardiola’s words were notable in another sense because insiders say that Ake is the type of player who is popular with literally everybody behind the scenes, which again is fairly common at City but not always a guarantee.
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“These types of players help to make the others bright,” Guardiola said of his on-pitch contributions. “I always pay attention to these things.”
Guardiola is very trusting of his players, especially ones who dedicate so much time to improving, so perhaps the biggest marker of Ake’s resurgence is that he has won City’s supporters around.
It was never going to be easy to stand out for a centre-back signed from an unfashionable club for a relatively modest £40million fee, especially joining a group that already includes favourites like Stones, Laporte and the bruising Dias. Reactions to some of his performances as he adapted and struggled with injuries were not always so forgiving.
But Ake would have ignored all that and focused on getting better. He is getting his rewards now.
(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
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