Man City 'target Klopp's old lieutenant' as Guardiola to shake up coaching staff

Two former Liverpool employees are under consideration as Pep Guardiola looks set to make significant changes to his Manchester City coaching staff.

Guardiola is eager for City to improve after a campaign in which they finished in third place in the Premier League, 13 points behind champions Liverpool.

City also missed out on silverware in the FA Cup as they were beaten in the final by Crystal Palace.

Juanma Lillo, Inigo Dominguez and Carlos Vicens are all set to depart the club. Mail Sport revealed earlier in the week that there had been some confusion among the backroom staff after the offer of contract renewals had been delayed.

Manchester City's Under-21 manager Ben Wilkinson will join Pep Guardiola's backroom team for the Club World Cup along with assistant Craig Mudd.

Further changes are expected, with one of the potential new recruits having previously worked alongside Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool.

As reported by Fabrizio Romano, Kolo Toure and Pep Lijnders are both being considered by City to join Guardiola's coaching staff.

Toure is already working for City as an assistant coach at youth level. He played for the club between 2009 and 2013, making 102 appearances and winning the Premier League title in the 2011-12 season.

The defender, who was previously part of Arsenal's Invincibles team, went on to play for Liverpool and Celtic.

He worked as an assistant coach at Leicester City and had a spell as manager of Wigan in the 2022-23 campaign but failed to win any of his nine games in charge.

Lijnders has had spells as a manager at NEC and Red Bull Salzburg.

While at Liverpool Ljinders was part of the coaching staff as Klopp's side won the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League title the following year.

Lillo has had two spells as assistant to Guardiola at City - initially between 2020 and 2022 and then from 2023 onwards. He was manager of Al Sadd for a spell inbetween.

Last weekend City secured their place in the Champions League for next season but alterations are set to be made.

City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has insisted that the club will be heavily active in the transfer market.

‘Four players (arrived) in January and that gives you an idea of what's coming this summer because we will continue this summer with this, serving the needs of the club,’ Al Mubarak said.

‘We'll go about our business and it will be very clear, very swift. Our objective is to try to be ready with the new squad for the Club World Cup.

‘I think when I look back, last summer, we probably should have been more aggressive in some of the changes we needed to do. We didn't do that and that ended up costing us this year.’

AC Milan midfielder Tijjani Reijnders, Nottingham Forest's Morgan Gibbs-White and Wolves defender Rayan Ait-Nouri are amongst City's targets along with Lyon's Rayan Cherki.