Personally, I think one of the main problems in our stuttering start to the season has been the middle of our midfield, given the range and quality of talent we possess there. Fernandinho, Yaya Touré, Fernando and Frank Lampard are the ones Pellegrini plays there by choice, but we know that Silva or Milner or possibly even Nasri if it came to it, could drop into the middle of the park and do just as well as any of the usual central midfield players.
We’ve seen several different combinations of those midfielders be tried out by Manuel Pellegrini over the last few weeks and months, but who should he have as his definitive pairing?
Fernandinho and Yaya: at the start of the season, this is probably the pairing most City fans would have gone with. We know how much success it brought us last season, with the defensive ability of Fernandinho counterbalancing the attacking nature of Yaya Touré, allowing him to roam free and eventually grab more goals than he ever had in a City shirt before in a single season. It’s not quite worked so far this season, with Yaya seemingly playing within himself after an unrestful summer.
Fernando and Yaya: regardless or whether Fernandinho should have been playing at the start of the season, Pellegrini opted to start Fernando alongside Yaya at the beginning of the campaign. In the early glimpses we’ve had of Fernando before and after his injury he’s looked similar to Fernandinho is some respects as well as a bit like Nigel De Jong in the way he’s tough tackling and a fairly rough player. In midfield, he tries to do the job we’ve been craving a player to do for so long: protect the defence and break up counterattacks. Fernando sitting back also allows Yaya to push forward more, and if the Ivorian hadn’t been off his game for the last couple of months (and Fernando hadn’t got injured so early on), we’d probably have seen the Fernando-Yaya partnership flourish.
Fernando and Fernandinho: with Yaya drawing a lot of criticism from several corners in the last few weeks, there’s been questions asked over whether Pellegrini should drop him altogether and play the two Brazilian midfielders alongside each other. Personally, I have my doubts over the balance of this; would Fernandinho be able to live up to the attacking benefit Yaya brings on his day? We saw Fernandinho do some great attacking things last season, but if he had to try do them all game, every game, he might struggle to maintain any level of consistency. Fernando and his compatriot might just be too similar to work together without Yaya also in the mix. We’ve seen three in midfield on more than one occasion this year, mainly when Pellegrini tries to just shore up the midfield and see out games. But without Yaya, it wouldn’t work sustainably.
After the season Yaya Touré had last year, I think it takes a lot of guts from Pellegrini to turn around to him and say “you’re not playing, you’ve not been good enough”. He was the player who had the most influence on our title challenge, and regardless of how poor he might have been so far this year it’s hard to take that away from him. When he’s on his day, he can do wonderful things, but we haven’t seen that so far. If he doesn’t turn his campaign around, we might just see Pellegrini build up the courage to take him from the team.
The reason I haven’t considered Lampard a viable regular starting midfielder has to be his age. He’s 36, and doesn’t have the stamina to run for 90 minutes every week like he did so well for Chelsea. Off the bench, he offers so much more: the ability to come on with fresh legs and control the ball in a way we haven’t seen too much this season. We’ve needed someone like him at times, and he’s stepped up to the plate when required.
Whilst Pellegrini almost certainly isn’t decided on his first-choice pairing just yet, he has to make his mind up sharp-ish. It’s getting into a very busy period of the season with some tough games coming up. He can’t rush a decision and have it end up costing him, but he needs to decide before it comes back to bite him.
