If Gabriel Jesus came to save Pep Guardiola’s faltering first season at Manchester City, the Abu Dhabi United Group’s Chosen One certainly didn’t know it for sure.“It’s like a watermelon. You have to open it up and see. But we knew his potential was good,†Guardiola said after his frighteningly young, frighteningly gifted front three tore West Ham United apart at the London Stadium.Jesus may have been signed from Palmeiras in January, but the deal was in place from the summer. City had to wait months for his arrival, and watch the prodigious talent from afar as he lit up YouTube clips and social media with goals and performances for Palmeiras and Brazil’s Olympic team. You may not know exactly how ripe a melon is before you cut into it, but there’s a trick: the ripest melons give off the sweetest smells through their skin. City have spent months sniffing this one.
The front three of Leroy Sane, Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus may well be ripening, but it’s the fact that they aren’t yet at their most mature that will excite Guardiola the most.
We hear a lot about philosophy and vision when we talk about the City manager, and while most of it may be overblown, it is certainly true that what he demands from his players, he demands very specifically. Part of the success in Barcelona was the fact that players like Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez and Sergio Busquets worshipped Guardiola – he was a La Masia graduate just like they were, and had gone on to win the Champions League with the senior team. He was a hero, and that helped. When he told them to do something, they subjugated themselves to his will with body and soul. Sacrificing themselves for the system, the story goes.
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At Bayern Munich, he was lucky again in that he could build a team of ‘nice guys’ who probably fitÂthe Graeme Souness criteria of ‘sons in law’ – it wouldn’t disappoint you if your daughter brought them home. Once again, Guardiola had a team of players he could mould.
With Gabriel Jesus, he seems to have found a valuable piece of the jigsaw at his new club. Perhaps another nice boy who will do exactly what he’s told, Jesus has also demonstrated an aggression and a determination in his first few matches at the Etihad Stadium. A Premier League version of the Guardiola nice boy, perhaps, and one that doesn’t fall into the Arsenal trap of simply being too nice: an ‘Arsenal haircut’, as Jonathan Wilson once put it in The Guardian, players with ‘hair as neat as their passing’.
These are, perhaps, the main takeaways from Guardiola’s first half season in charge of City. The intensity of the Premier League, and its lesser teams’ refusal to defend deep for 90 minutes in the hope of nicking a 0-0 draw hasn’t given his back line anytime to get used to a pass-at-all-costs game in the face of high and heavy pressure. And added to that, the squad he has inherited didn’t include too many players of a malleable type.
The chief problem on that score is Sergio Aguero. Arguably the greatest striker in English football, the Argentine may be the greatest out-and-out striker in the world, too. But he doesn’t show the aggression to press and the willingness to bend to Guardiola’s will, both qualities the Catalan feels he needs from his main striker this season.
How do you leave a player like Aguero on the bench indefinitely? A club legend who represents a link to City’s initial successes under their new ownership, he is also still a lethal goalscorer and the team’s top scorer this season.
This season, City may cope better with a different type of striker in the team. Like Daniel Sturridge at Liverpool, Aguero’s ability to adapt to the style of play has been called into question, as has his injury record. And as is borne out in the infographic below, Aguero’s contribution to City’s overall win percentage seems to be on a downward trajectory.
It seems that at some point in 2014 City started to win more games without the Argentine than they did with him. Initially, it looks as if Manuel Pellegrini’s side simply learned to play without Aguero; given his injury prone nature, they had to. This season, maybe the difference is explained by the system City are employing, and Aguero’s suitability to play in it. Your best eleven players don’t always make your best team.
It is premature to predict the demise of a talent like Aguero’s after one game where he was left out, and in one season where he hasn’t always been City’s focal point. Yet some games seem to herald more than just one more example to back up a wider point. There are some games that just feel significant, like you are witnessing history.
Being left on the bench against West Ham was one thing, but having to watch on as a masterclass in tenacity, pressing, and speed on the counter attack is performed by three attackers an entire generation younger is quite another. It felt like the first step in a process that will see a changing of the guard over the next year or two. A process which could be hastened if Aguero himself decides he should move on this summer.
When Guardiola took over at City, he spoke of a three-year plan, not instant success. His signings in the summer backed that up: John Stones, Leroy Sane and Gabriel Jesus were all additions with an eye on the future, not instant success. But they were also players who could be moulded to fit, players who were young enough to be groomed to idolise Pep and his methods, players who wouldn’t resist the manager when he gave them specific instructions. Malleable. Pliable.
Gabriel Jesus may not be the saviour of Guardiola’s time at Manchester City all by himself, but he is the attacker favoured by City’s Chosen manager, not Sergio Aguero, it seems. It may have been coming over the past few years – City may not need Aguero, they may have learned how to play without him, and are now even starting to outgrow him.
It won’t happen overnight, but what we witnessed at the London Stadium was more than just an exciting performance from three exciting young players. It was the start of the changing of the guard.
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