Manchester City vs Celtic: Pep Guardiola to decide future of young prospect Patrick Roberts at end of season

Pep Guardiola will decide on Patrick Roberts’ future at the end of the season after the Manchester City attacker scored for Celtic against his parent club in the Champions League, with Brendan Rodgers saying the youngster has a “big career” ahead of him at City.

Roberts’ opened the scoring in the fourth minute of the 1-1 draw in Manchester, which was irrelevant to the final standings in Group C. City will not be seeded for the last-16 draw on Monday after finishing second behind Barcelona, while Celtic were already assured of bottom before kick-off.

City signed Roberts for £11m from Fulham in 2015 and he is on loan at Celtic until the end of the season. At first Guardiola was reluctant to talk up the 19-year-old when asked about his performance post-match, but the Spaniard eventually praised Roberts’ display.

“He scored a good goal,” said the City manager. “We are going to talk about [his future] at the end of the season. We know his quality. The decision is not only on one game. We are going to speak with him and we will decide. Of course he has good qualities as a winger, one-on-one and he worked defensively, he has potential. I’m so happy about his performance.

“We look for [loan] clubs who are going to play in a way that suit those qualities, we need players to be quick [with the brain] and at some clubs they don’t play like this. We try to help them, to play every single week and build up their football.”

Rodgers praised the development of his team throughout the group stage of the Champions League, a campaign that he believes the club can be proud of after their ignominious start in Barcelona when the Scottish champions lost 7-0.

On Roberts’ future potential, the Celtic manager said: “I was really impressed with Patrick in the build-up to this game, because he didn’t show any signs of emotion. He showed his quality, the kid. He showed that he’s in the right place at this moment in his career, there’s no point him sitting on the bench and not playing and it’s great that Manchester City allows him to play in a game like this here.

open image in gallery

“He certainly has the quality [to play for City]. I think when we signed his agreement it was for 18 months. When you get to his age you need to be playing games. You come to Celtic, with 60,000 every week, a huge club with big expectancy and he’s dealing with that remarkably well. He’s won a league title, a league cup so he understands being a winner as well.

“I’m sure he’ll come back in the summer and Pep and his staff will have a really good look at him. I think they will be really encouraged at what they’ve seen tonight. He’s a young English talent and I’m sure they’ll be a big career for him here.

“The campaign overall, I’m delighted. After our first game we knew the level we were at. But apart from the first game our performance levels have been very good. We haven’t been beaten by Manchester City and arguably could have won both games.”