STONES IS A QUALITY DEFENDER BUT HE’S GONE BACKWARDS UNDER PEP
SERGIO Aguero, 93.20. A name and a figure that will go down in Manchester City folklore.
John Stones, 11.7 millimetres. A name and a measurement that should stand not too far below it.
Had Liverpool taken the lead in the Premier League game against Manchester City in January, 2019, they might well have gone on to win it, instead of losing it 2-1 and having their advantage in the table cut to four points.
Mights, buts, ifs, maybes. Sure.
And Stones’ clearance, when all but 11.7 millimetres of the ball had crossed the goalline, was not as obviously decisive as Aguero’s addedtime winner against QPR on the final day of the 2012 campaign.
But it was a watershed moment in City’s title defence that season and increasingly distant evidence that Stones CAN defend. Pep Guardiola once thought so, or at least thought he could play.
In April, 2018, Guardiola said this. “I don’t know how long I will be in Manchester but as long as I am here, John Stones will be with us.”
That now seems unlikely. Guardiola and Stones seemed a perfect match. The ball-playing coach and the ball-playing centre-half. But while Guardiola takes the credit for improving so many players, he has taken Stones backwards. The player himself, of course, will be held accountable but Guardiola cannot escape scrutiny when he is showered with praise for upping the games of Raheem Sterling and the like.
Under Guardiola’s tutelage, Stones was expected to flourish, expected to develop into what many of us thought would be a totem of the national team.
Obviously, Stones has to take full responsibility for his relative fall from grace.
But defending in a Guardiola team can be hard, even though you might have little to do for long periods. Way back in December of 2016, City travelled to the King Power stadium and Guardiola deployed a back three.
Stones was at its centre with Pablo Zabaleta and Bacary Sagna on either side.
Zabaleta and Sagna did not turn down any opportunity to bomb on and Stones was left isolated. Pep has always had a penchant for one at the back.
Every time Leicester countered, they scored. Jamie Vardy helped himself to a hattrick, Manchester City went 4-0 down and Stones made a howler. It was almost a template for things to come.
There have been mistakes for England, notably in the Nations League game against Holland in the summer of 2019. Gareth Southgate promptly dropped him from the next game against Switzerland. Despite what Guardiola once said, Stones’ days at Manchester City are surely numbered. Eric Garcia is a raw teenage centre-half but is higher in the pecking order, Nathan Ake is poised to sign for £41million and talk remains of Kalidou Koulibaly making a big-money move to the Etihad from Napoli.
Stones could sit on a contract that has two years to run but he turns 27 in January and needs to be playing regularly.
And someone is going to get a very classy footballer. England are not so blessed in the central defensive area that Stones cannot still become the leader his admirers thought he would be.
He is a quality player. He is also an anomaly, someone who has not improved under Guardiola.
Pep might have once claimed they were inseparable but for the sake of a what should have been – and could still be – a truly stellar career, Stones has to cut loose.