Irreplaceable Sergio Aguero's killer touch was sorely missed by Manchester City at Stamford Bridge
It is faintly ridiculous to suggest that a team that had scored 45 league goals in 15 matches has a problem in attack but the fact is Manchester City’s defeat away to Chelsea highlighted one thing: they need Sergio Aguero.
With Kevin De Bruyne injured there has been a discussion this season as to which player is the most important to the Premier League champions.
The current conclusion has been Fernandinho, given the Brazilian’s unique role and that there is not a similar under-study should he, at 33, suffer an injury. Maybe it is David Silva but, for all the Spaniard’s brilliance, and the fact that City are a better, slicker side with him, there are reliable options.
But at centre-forward? Right now the injured Aguero is clearly irreplaceable and not least because Gabriel Jesus is struggling to such an extent that Pep Guardiola deemed that he would start away to Chelsea with Raheem Sterling through the middle, although he later switched that to deploy Riyad Mahrez there.
Sterling did not play badly although Mahrez and, on the other flank, Leroy Sane did. It is hard to envisage that had one or two of the chances that City spurned in a first 44 minutes of such utter dominance that they appeared to be on a different level, or two, to Chelsea had fallen to Aguero they would not have been taken.
Guardiola has played Sterling in that role in the past. He has even used Bernardo Silva there but Aguero was missed against Chelsea. Not just because of his individual chance conversion rate but because of the overall effect of him being in the team.
Aguero has eight goals in 13 league appearances this season but, crucially, with him in the side City’s conversion rate is 15.69 per cent, second only behind Arsenal in the Premier League. Without Aguero City are at 11.11 per cent which actually puts them below Brighton, West Ham United and Bournemouth along with the other five teams in the ‘Big Six’.
“The first-half we had chances and we cannot expect to have a lot of chances against a team like Chelsea,” Guardiola later said and that lament was familiar to his first season in the Premier League when he was frustrated by the number of opportunities his team missed.
City have remedied that but still have more of a killer touch with Aguero who brings greater definition to their attack especially with Jesus shorn of confidence. Even when he came on the Brazilian did not have the conviction as was shown when he shot tamely in the dying seconds after City had turned over possession.
The good news for City is that Aguero is expected to be fit for Saturday’s home game against Everton. The other good news for City is that despite losing to Chelsea they have now, in their opening eight away games they have already faced Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and now been to Stamford Bridge. Of the ‘Big Six’ they only have to travel to Manchester United.
The good news for everyone (bar City fans) is that after Guardiola’s first league defeat of the season it does appear that there will be a title race even if the holders remain clear favourites. Liverpool are top and in that fight. Can Chelsea force their way in? Probably not. But this was an extremely important result for them and, more directly, their manager Maurizio Sarri and his methods. It may have been a performance far from the ‘Sarri-ball’ domination of possession that the Italian demands. But that was partly born of the fact City keep the ball and also a pragmatic realisation that, consequently, Chelsea would have to defend deeper and break ‘the press’ as they did with the opening goal.
Neither did Chelsea use a recognised central striker with Eden Hazard deployed as the ‘false nine’, as he has been in the past, and as Sarri hinted he will be again in ‘big’ games. Alvaro Morata did not even make the bench so it is clear that his future does not lie at Chelsea.
There was nothing sophisticated in Sarri’s approach; no tactical ‘lightbulb’ moment. It just turned out to be a game more suited to good defending – as epitomised by Cesar Azpilicueta – and energetic, aggressive midfield play. It was, in essence, a game for N’Golo Kante rather than Jorginho with David Luiz also deserving an honorary mention.
It was his raking cross-field pass that opened up the pitch for Kante to score with Chelsea’s first attempt at goal and it was Luiz who rose to steer a header, from Hazard’s corner, in off the cross-bar for the second goal. For both there were City errors and not least Sane’s failure to track Kante – but why also was substitute Ilkay Gundogan marking Luiz at the corner?
City did not play poorly. They were sublime in the first-half but they did miss Aguero. It is the kind of comment that infuriates managers, not least Guardiola. “Nobody knows,” he said when asked whether his team would not have lost with the striker. And of course he is right. It is hypothetical. But there is a weight of evidence.
