5 big name players who were axed by Pep Guardiola

#4 Yaya Toure

Yaya Toure was forced to leave the club by Pep Guardiola

Yaya Toure had joined Barcelona at the start of the 2007/08 season from AS Monaco for a fee of around €10 million. The Ivory Coast international had a great first season at the club under then manager Frank Rijkaard.

But as soon as Pep Guardiola took over the reigns of Barcelona in 2008, changes began to happen at the Catalan club as most of the experienced players were offloaded by the Spanish manager.

However, Yaya Toure was not sold in Pep’s first season in charge which meant he had included the Ivorian in his plans. But as the 2008/09 season started, Guardiola favoured youngster Sergio Busquets in the defensive midfielder role, which saw Toure resigned to the bench.

It was the start of the end of Toure’s career at Barcelona. The midfielder did stay at the club for one more season but Busquets was favoured by Guardiola.

Toure decided that he was done sitting on the bench and went to Manchester City as soon as the 2019/10 season ended. The Ivorian managed to score four goals for the club after making 74 appearances for the first team in his 3 years at Catalonia. The duo have since been reunited at Manchester City and it is reported that the Spaniard is again willing to offload Toure.