Rayan Cherki is Man City's new individualistic maverick with his eyes on the Ballon d'Or - but can Pep Guardiola avoid another Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Jack Grealish situation with the dazzling Frenchman?

Cherki's signing for City immediately led to comparisons with when Jack Grealish arrived at the Etihad Stadium for a Premier League-record transfer fee of £100 million ($135m) as a frighteningly talented playmaker, only to have all his creative tendencies stamped out of him by Guardiola.

Grealish was heralded as a street footballer at Aston Villa, but at City he has been given the rather less flattering description of 'the rest station'. His role under Guardiola has primarily been to hug the touchline with the ball and hold on to it so the team can reset and his team-mates can get forward to progress the move.

The treble-winning season of 2022-23 was Grealish's only good campaign out of four at the Etihad Stadium, and now he is seen as an outcast having been left out of the Club World Cup squad to try and find a new club after starting just seven Premier League games this past season, before not getting on the pitch for the FA Cup final as he was overlooked for teenage debutant Claudio Echeverri at Wembley. Grealish was also the victim of some less than complimentary comments from Guardiola, who revealed publicly that Savinho was in better shape than the England international.

Cherki's arrival at City has also led to thought of Zlatan Ibrahimovic's disastrous season under Guardiola at Barcelona. The Swede famously lambasted the Catalan's methods in his autobiography, likening the atmosphere Guardiola had created within the squad to a school. Ibrahimovic simply did not fit in and did not want to follow his coach's orders to behave and conform. It all came to a head after Barca were knocked out of the Champions League semi-finals by Ibrahimovic's former club Inter, after which the striker told Guardiola "You have no balls."

In his revealing autobiography, 'I Am Zlatan', Ibrahimovic wrote: "I had done a lot to adapt – the Barca players were like schoolboys, following the coach blindly, whereas I was used to asking ‘Why?'. I like guys who run red lights, not pedantic and strict rules. I tried to be overly nice, didn’t dare lose my temper.

"But after this I stopped trying to adapt. For example, at Barcelona, players were banned from driving their sports cars to training. I thought this was ridiculous – it was certainly not the club’s business what car I drive – so in April, before a match with Almeria, I drove my Ferrari Enzo to training and it caused a scene. When you buy me, you are buying a Ferrari. If you drive a Ferrari, you put premium petrol in the tank, you hit the motorway and you step on the gas. Guardiola filled up with diesel and took a spin in the countryside. He should have bought a Fiat."

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Cherki has not yet scaled the heights that Grealish and Ibrahimovic had before they linked up with Guardiola, but there have been several instances of the ex-Lyon man having a Diva-esque attitude which could lead to him running into problems with his new boss at some point.

In his breakthrough season with Lyon in 2019-2020, Cherki demanded to return to the youth team in protest at being left on the bench for a Ligue 1 game against Bordeaux. But he did not play well when back in the academy ranks, and his own father was heard shouting at him: "If you don't want to play, get off the pitch."

Rudi Garcia, the coach who gave Cherki his debut, warned early on about the danger of him getting carried away by the hype that was building around him. He said: "We all keep telling him that he will have the career he deserves if he continues to work. The danger is to make him believe that he is already one of the best players on the planet."

Garcia's successor, Peter Bosz, had no interest in paying Cherki special attention and used him sporadically during his tenure. "I know that Cherki is very popular, it's great for him and for the fans," he explained. "I choose my players to win the match every week. If I see that we can win with Rayan he will start, otherwise it will be another player."

Laurent Blanc revealed he had "some heated discussions" with Cherki over his tendency to play for himself rather than the collective, but Fabio Grosso proved to be the most critical of the playmaker, saying: "He's a player, not a special player. He's a player like any other, albeit with some additional qualities. But it’s not just technical qualities that matter; there are mental and athletic qualities as well."

Cherki began to really show his worth under Grosso's successor Pierre Sage, albeit after a spell on the fringes of the Lyon team and then another period of being left out at the start of last season amid a contract stand-off with the club. He made a typically emphatic return to action by scoring a few minutes after coming off the bench against Marseille, the start of a run of five goals and seven assists between September and December. When Sage was eventually sacked in January, Cherki paid him an emotional tribute, saying: "He leaves behind an exceptional legacy."

Cherki also showed leadership under his final boss at Lyon, Paulo Fonseca. The Portuguese was slapped with a nine-month touchline ban in domestic matches for confronting a referee, and in their next match, against FCSB in the Europa League, Lyon's players mobbed Fonseca. Cherki said afterwards: "We felt a sense of injustice before the match, we wanted to give everything for him." He backed up those words by notchin five goals and 15 assists in 19 matches under Fonseca.

Cherki certainly believes he has knuckled down in the last few years and worked on the areas of his game that were previously lacking: "I think I had the best season of my career, I managed to make people talk only about good things: my passes, dribbling. I don’t hear many people talking about the unfounded criticism I faced. I think I took a step forward in all aspects: my efficiency, defensive work, efforts without the ball. Everyone knows my offensive style, dribbling, passing. That’s not what I worked on most, I instead worked on knowing what I wanted to become, which makes the difference."

Guardiola and City will be hoping that Cherki has fully matured and that there is no return to his tempestuous ways of the past. It is a myth that Guardiola cannot work with fiery personalities who also possess supreme talent. After all, the Catalan was the one who presided over Lionel Messi's path to superstardom, and the Argentine genius was not always easy to work with, despite popular perception.

Messi once sent Guardiola a message on the way back from an away match at Malaga complaining about Ibrahimovic usurping him as the team's central striker. "Well, I see I’m no longer important for the team," it read. Soon after Guardiola rejigged his formation to suit Messi, stifling Ibrahimovic in the process. Siding with Messi over Ibrahimovic might have ruined his relationship with the Swede, but it was undoubtedly the right decision.

Messi is far from the only genius individual that Guardiola has managed to get a tune out of. He had a fascinating relationship with Kevin De Bruyne, who was often prone to sulking, and he has also got the best out of Erling Haaland. If anything, Guardiola enjoys working with players with a high opinion of themselves, just as long as it doesn't get out of hand and the player doesn't start challenging his authority too much and destabilising the team, like Ibrahimovic and Joao Cancelo infamously did.

"My favourite player is when it's a good person. To be a footballer the ego needs to be a little high, not that much high, but I love to work with these types of persons. I love it," Guardiola told Sky Sports in 2022, a few months into working with Haaland. "One of the things I learnt ages ago when we were going to sign a player is to ask the sporting director how he is as a person. I don't care about the skills. [Legendary Spanish golfer] Seve Ballesteros said character is more important than swing. It doesn't make sense to win titles when there's poison or bad things in the facilities, the locker rooms."

As long as Cherki does not poison the atmosphere within the City squad, then he should be ok. As well as the confident statement about the Ballon d'Or and the crowd-pleasing barb about United, Cherki has been keen to show that he knows his place in his new team's hierarchy.

"I’m not Kevin De Bruyne - he’s the legend," he insisted. "I’m here to help the team. We have the best players in the world. I work and I wait my turn. I spoke with Pep about my position on the pitch and we spoke about what I enjoy when I’m on the pitch. It’s very good for me. He told me he loves a No.10, but now I play all the positions in the pitch - so it’s not complicated because I just want to play. Pep told me, 'When you have the ball, you are free' which is very good for me because it’s my first quality to help the team."

Cherki's dribbling ability and his confidence when shooting from range will be key to City unlocking stubborn opponents and to them easing the goal-scoring burden on Haaland after the likes of Phil Foden, Savinho and Jeremy Doku failed to step up last season. While structure remains a key part of the positional play Guardiola wants his team to live by, they also need match-winners, and Cherki has proved to be one of those in Ligue 1.

Only time will tell if the Frenchman can follow in Rodri's footsteps and win the Ballon d'Or at City, or become De Bruyne's rightful heir at the Etihad Stadium. What is clear already, though, is that City have signed a huge personality with huge ambition - and he now has a coach who matches it.