Renato Sanches has just come out of his teens, turning 20 last month. However, he has the hopes of one City’s football team resting on his shoulders right now, and he is only there because of a loan deal.
Sanches joined Swansea on deadline day in a hugely surprising loan move and they are going to rely heavily on the Portuguese youngster in their bid for survival.
When Swansea signed Renato Sanches it came as a surprise to the whole footballing world.
However, the Swansea boss Paul Clement has previously worked with Sanches when he was the assistant manager at his club Bayern Munich.
That link was enough for Bayern to trust Swansea with one of their most promising young talents and that formed the deal.
It isn’t a normal situation in the Premier League for a club to rely so heavily on a player who is so young, and one who is on loan, but that is what Swansea are going to do.
They are in desperate need of creativity and goals after the departures of Gylfi Sigurdsson and Fernando Llorente during the summer and Sanches is one player tasked with replacing those two.
Sanches was used sparingly last season when playing at Bayern; he featured in 17 Bundesliga games, although his minutes on the field averaged out at just 36 minutes in those 17 games, coming on as a substitute in a lot of them.
The situation in Swansea is going to be a lot different to that and expect to see him start the majority of their games where he will be expected to contribute in a big way when the team are going forward.
So far in his career, Sanches has registered six goals and seven assists, a low number for someone who will be in charge of pretty much everything from an attacking perspective at Swansea.
However, now 20 year old, he is coming into his own and the next two seasons are going to be huge for him in his quest to become a world footballing star.
If he starts his Swansea career on the right foot then there is no reason to think he cannot move both his goal and assist numbers into double figures before Christmas.
Swansea will be hoping to see him better his current career record in just one season with them, and if he does then they have a great chance of survival.
According to the latest tips from Oddshecker, Swansea are only considered to be the fifth favourites for relegation. The faith placed in them by bookmakers is likely to be due, in part, to their good away form this season so far, where the Swans have yet to concede a goal on the road.
This means the bookmakers think Swansea will stay up, because four clubs are expected to finish below them and with three clubs being relegated that makes Swansea safe in their eyes.
With Renato Sanches at the club, Swansea have a creative spark that no one else in the relegation scrap can compete with.
Sanches alone looks to have more creativity in him than the whole Brighton and Crystal Palace teams combined, which means Swansea should always have scoring chances in them.
Scoring goals is vital for survival and with Wilfried Bony coming back to the club he is the ideal man to finish off all the chances created by Sanches.
Excitement built in Swansea as soon as the capture was announced and fans quickly made a great Youtube video showing off his talents.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=__4TWTZPQnM
Should Swansea survive then that will be because the Sanches and Bony combination has really clicked and come together well.
Swansea fans will be pinning their hopes on those two, and it is easy to see why with the quality they have between them. They can offer much more than any other teams in the relegation zone when going forward and that will be the key to the survival push from Swansea City.
At some point this season the Premier League will be talking about these two and the magic they are creating down at Swansea, enough to keep Swansea safe.
For such a young man, Renato Sanches has a lot to carry on his shoulders but from the glimpses of promise shown by him, he is more than capable of stepping up.
He is going to deliver for Swansea this season and lead them to Premier League safety before moving onto bigger and better things on the world stage.