Last week, I wrote about which strike partnership would be best for Manchester City and the benefits that Sergio Agüero, Edin Džeko, Stevan Jovetić and Álvaro Negredo brought to the City side. Since then Negredo has left on loan and gone back to Spain, where he will line up for Valencia until next summer when his temporary transfer becomes permanent. John Guidetti has also left on loan since then, joining Celtic after the deadline once both clubs and the SFA pushed for the move to go through. Now we have to think – can City survive with just three strikers?
On the face of it, it definitely looks like the answer is yes. Agüero and Jovetić had difficulties with injuries last year, but if they can remain fit this season they are likely to keep up their good form – they could well be the first-choice strikers now Negredo has departed. Edin Džeko might not be easy on the eye a lot of the time, but he’s scored some very important goals in his three-and-a-half years with City; not least the equaliser in THAT game in May 2012. Those three striking options look to be more than adequate and are an attack-force that most in the teams would kill for.
But the fact of the matter is, all of those players have their flaws. It’s only been a couple of months since Sergio Agüero’s latest injury, and there’s no real evidence it won’t happen again sometime soon. Jovetić has been fit and firing for some months now so looks to be less at risk than his Argentinian partner, but the lingering worry amongst City fans is still there. As well as that, Edin Džeko is often a less-than-reliable option. His goal-to-game ratio of 0.43 is one that a lot of strikers could only dream of, but along with that is a lot of poor displays and often long runs without any goals. It took him over four months to score his first goal in the Premier League (although he had scored in the FA Cup and Europe before that point) and has gone on three-month droughts since then. Still, the evidence shows he is definitely improving, scoring 26 goals in 46 games last season.
Being fair to those three, Negredo didn’t have what you’d call a stellar second half of the season last year. His first few months were brilliant to say the least (he’d scored 23 goals by the end of January), but after a shoulder injury in January he struggled with fitness and barely scored for the rest of the season, due to a mixture of a lack of confidence and a lack of opportunities.
There were rumours that City were looking to bring a striker in to replace the exiting Negredo. There were a few names mentioned, but none as much as Radamel Falcao. Speculation started a couple of days before the end of the transfer window after rumours started coming out of Italy, but the deal eventually never came off, the player ending up at Manchester United instead. Depending on who you believe, either City turned him down (due to his fitness or his pricetag) or he turned The Blues down.
Whilst Manuel Pellegrini does like to have two good players for each position on the pitch, in order to eliminate complacency and allow for effective rotation, past evidence suggests he should be able to cope with just three strikers. The afore-mentioned injury problems and Negredo’s loss of form in the latter half of last season often left Pellegrini short. Despite this, City went on to win two trophies, scoring 154 goals in the process. So it obviously can work, but whether it will is a different matter.
In an ideal world, Negredo wouldn’t have left and gone back to Spain, but if a player is unhappy then he needs to be allowed to leave. He’s only human, after all. The circumstances have arisen leaving us with just three strikers, and given the strength of the other teams in the league we might struggle to match them, but there’s nothing to do now. All three strikers are of a high-quality and should be able to do the job they need to when called upon.
