Ilkay Gündoğan: Goalscoring midfielder!

Under Pep Guardiola, FC Barcelona's latest signing became a total midfielder and began to truly shine in front of goal

Barça's first signing of the 2023/24 close season is no ordinary player. Ilkay Gündoğan's arrival equips Xavi Hernández with somebody who has developed in his seven years at Manchester City into a midfielder with a complete repertoire of attributes.

Third highest goalscoring midfielder

It's not that he wasn't already a very solid performer at Borussia Dortmund, but under Pep Guardiola he became more than a midfielder. He also became a goalscorer. In fact, in the time he was at City, only two other midfielders were able to top his 60 goals.

He was tied for that figure with his former team-mate, Phil Foden, while Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United scored 64, although it has to be noted that 25 of those goals were penalties (as opposed to just four of Gündoğan's). The top ranked midfielder in that period was Kevin de Bruyne, another of his fellow Citizens, who scored 80 goals in the last seven seasonsTransformation under Pep Guardiola

It would seem that Pep Guardiola had much to do with the way the player became such an attack-minded player. At Dortmund, Gündoğan scored 15 goals in 157 games, meaning his goals-per-game rate roughly doubled in the sky blue of Man City. Now he is 32, he has gathered a huge amount of experience, but there are still plenty of years for his amazing talents to be of service to FC Barcelona.