Morgan Gibbs-White to Man City: Nottingham Forest star can help fill Kevin De Bruyne's boots - but Florian Wirtz should be Pep Guardiola's priority

Gibbs-White is Forest's joint-third top scorer and second assist provider this season, with 12 goal contributions this season, 15 last campaign and 13 in 2022-23. He is the heartbeat of the team, the de-facto captain whenever main skipper Ryan Yates does not make the starting line-up. And when the transfer window opens he will be the club's most in-demand player.

Manchester United and Liverpool are reported to be interested in him but City are the club that need him the most as they search for a successor to De Bruyne. And given their financial muscle, recent domination of English football and the pull of Pep Guardiola, they are believed to be at the front of the queue for the 25-year-old.

Bayer Leverkusen's Florian Wirtz is still regarded as City's top choice to take the baton from De Bruyne but there are doubts about whether he wants to leave Germany and whether City will be prepared to pay more than £100 million ($133m) to get him. Gibbs-White, though, looks like their second choice and there are several reasons why he would be an even better fit at the Etihad Stadium than the 21-year-old.

Gibbs-White has spent his whole career in England and, unlike Wirtz, would need no time to adapt to the Premier League. He would fit well into the City dressing room, too, as he is close friends with Phil Foden, who he has known since he was 16 due to playing in England's youth teams, including winning the under-17 World Cup together in 2017. Gibbs-White is godfather to two of Foden's children and is now his team-mate in the senior squad.

More importantly, he has physical attributes that few attacking midfielders of his mould possess. Take what Jamie Carragher said about him earlier this season on Sky Sports: "The thing I like about him, and we’ve seen the number he’s got, the number 10. What’s special about him is he’s got great pace and that’s what he gives Forest that a lot of teams don’t have with players in that position."

The player's searing pace was on display when he scored against his former club Wolves earlier this season, when he picked the ball up in his own half and hared towards the opposing area, exchanging a pass with Anthony Elanga before picking his spot in the near bottom corner. And it is a big reason why City want to buy him.

One of City's main weaknesses this season has been a lack of physical intensity, particularly in midfield since Rodri suffered a serious knee injury in September. City's midfield has been achingly slow, comprised of the likes of Bernardo Silva and Mateo Kovacic, who turned 30 at the start of the season, and those even deeper into their 30s, such as De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan, who were 33 and 34 respectively when the campaign began.

And the coach, who became the most coveted tactician in the world due to mastering the art of positional play with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and then City, has become painfully aware of the need to adapt to a changing world. Guardiola said in January: "We didn't fight properly [for the title] because we were not in the rhythm that we should play. Today modern football is the way Bournemouth play, Newcastle play, Brighton play. Liverpool have always been like that, like we were. It's modern football. Today modern football is not positional, you have to ride the rhythm. We couldn't because we didn't have the players."

As well as needing physically sharp players, Guardiola will be prioritising those with a good track record of staying fit. He has become immensely frustrated with the likes of De Bruyne, John Stones, Jack Grealish and Nathan Ake getting repeatedly injured this season. Earlier this month he outlined how important it was to sign resilient players, saying: "You cannot perform if you aren't reliable and you are injured. The players we have, they can either play every three days or they cannot. We need to build a squad for next season."

Gibbs-White might not have the experience of playing European football every two weeks but he has an impressive record of staying fit and being available. He has missed just eight Premier League games in the last three seasons and two of those absences were due to suspension.

But above all it is his ability to pick passes and score goals that make him a candidate to take over from De Bruyne. "He’s just got it all. He’s shining in that team and it suits him being the main man," said former Liverpool and England midfielder Danny Murphy on talkSPORT.

"He’s terrific with his back to goal, great skill, can score, good passer - he takes risks with his passes and through balls. The great advantage with someone like Gibbs-White is he wants to do the work without the ball and you don’t always get attacking players who want to. He can play centre-midfield, I’ve seen him play it in a two. He is phenomenal, he’s just really unlucky at the moment that England have got so many good players in a similar position. I think he could play in any team."

Murphy had one doubt about Gibbs-White playing for a top club like City, though, when he admitted: "The only question you’d have is playing under bigger pressure and having to do it more consistently." And there has been some discussion about whether or not Gibbs-White would want to join City and be burdened with the task of replacing De Bruyne, who is arguably the club's best player ever.

"If I'm his agent I'm telling him to stay," said Troy Deeney. "He's got Champions League football [at Forest], he's the captain, at least do another year. He can thrive in most situations but it's very difficult to thrive in that big boy level." Deeney's talkSPORT colleague Sam Matterface agreed. He said: "You look what happened to Kalvin Phillips and Jack Grealish. If you're Morgan Gibbs-White you know you're going to play every week at Nottingham Forest, is that guaranteed to be the case at Man City?"

Equally, Gibbs-White could look at how his best friend Foden has shone at City, been nurtured by Guardiola and cleaned up all the individual awards last season in addition to winning a stonking amount of trophies. He has recently turned 25 and is at the perfect stage in his career to make his big move. While leading Forest back into the Champions League would be a huge honour, he would be crazy not to want to move to City. Guardiola is such a perfectionist that he will not be able to stomach a season as disappointing as this one and there should be little doubt that his side will roar back next season and be competing to win back their Premier League crown.

City spent £180m ($239m) in the January transfer window and they have the capacity to splash out again in the summer to arm Guardiola with the squad he needs. And finding a suitable replacement for De Bruyne is the biggest decision the coach and new sporting director Hugo Viana will make between now and August.

But for all Gibbs-White's progress in the last three years and his role in one of the most uplifting football stories of this season, he is not the outstanding candidate. That remains Wirtz. The German is four years younger than Gibbs-White and has been seen as the next great playmaker ever since he became the youngest scorer in Bundesliga history in 2020 soon after turning 17.

He overcame a serious knee injury in 2022 and came back even stronger, spearheading Leverkusen's sensational charge towards a first Bundesliga title - remaining unbeaten in the process - while also adding the DFB Pokal and making it to the Europa League final. Wirtz contributed to 37 goals across all competitions last season, deservedly being named the Bundesliga's player of the season. He has been nearly as good this year, with 30 goal involvements in all competitions.

That's more than double the amount of Gibbs-White, even though he missed a small chunk of the season after injuring his ankle in March. And his numbers are more akin to De Bruyne's in the Belgian's second season with Wolfsburg, when he posted 30 combined goals and assists in the Bundesliga plus another 10 in the Europa League before joining City for a then club record of £55m ($73m).

Gibbs-White, of course, has been playing for a relatively goal-shy team, with his 12 goals and assists accounting for 22 percent of his side's output in the league. And his team have been geared towards counter-attacking. But while that means he could become more productive at City, he could also find it hard to adapt to a team that take the initiative in every game and often have to try and break down teams who put 10 men behind the ball.

If money is no object for City, and they can continue to spend freely without worrying about meeting their PSR obligations, then they should go all out for Wirtz and try to replace the Premier League's greatest playmaker with the man already on the way to emulating him. But if Wirtz decides to sign a contract renewal with Leverkusen that has been months in the making, then City know exactly who to turn to. And Gibbs-White knows how to turn their heads - by knocking them out of the FA Cup.