Rodri, Cancelo reveal secret ingredient to succeeding at City
LIKE last weekend, there was another dominant midfield display from Rodri. Like last weekend, another breakthrough was made possible by a divine Joao Cancelo pass.
Like last weekend, it was another comfortable, professional Manchester City win worthy of the status of champions. And though he would never admit it publicly, deep down Pep Guardiola may be ever so slightly encouraged that history is starting to repeat itself.
It was this time last season, as the temperature dipped and nights drew in, that Guardiola and his players embarked on what would become a 28game winning run in all competitions, transforming themselves from Premier League title outsiders to champions-elect.
If that is to happen again, though, there will be a difference: much of it will come down to two players whose influence has grown exponentially over the intervening period.
That is certainly true of Rodri. Now in his third season in Manchester, he spent much of the first struggling to step into the most demanding role in Guardiola’s system, unable to muster the special blend of positional discipline, high intensity ball-winning and considered use of possession that an ageing Fernandinho had mastered over the course of three seasons and two title-winning campaigns.
City suffered as a result, becoming too easy to expose on the break and the type of opponents that Sunday’s opponents West Ham would have relished playing against.
The approach which David
Moyes’s side took at the Etihad at the weekend would probably have been successful back then.
Instead, they did not manage a shot on
Ederson’s goal between the
28th and
77th minutes.
The 2-1 scoreline flattered them.
That had a lot to do with how Rodri dictated play in and out of possession. No City player made more tackles or interceptions, or pressures in the middle third of the pitch.
Once the ball was at his feet, he refuted his reputation for safe and sideways passing.
Only Kyle Walker played more balls into the final third.
This is an altogether different Rodri from the player seen during his first season in Manchester.
That is often the case under Guardiola, as Gary Neville
pointed out while commentating on the win against Everton the previous week. These things take time.
“This happens quite a lot during Guardiola’s
time at Manchester City when you see a player come in during that first six months and you think: ‘I’m
not quite sure they fit in, I’m not quite sure they are at the level that City have had in the past’.
“Then they just tend to grow and grow and get better. Rodri is doing that now. There are lots of them.”
Cancelo is another. The
Portuguese fullback has been earning plaudits for his performances for some time now but, arriving the same summer as Rodri, his early days at City were even more inauspicious.
All that changed last season, when Cancelo’s creative and technical ability from the fullback positions began to shine through and was widely applauded.
After the outrageous outside of the boot pass to set up Raheem Sterling against Everton, last week there was a 40-yard cross-field ball to put Riyad Mahrez inside the penalty area, in position to set up for Ilkay Gundogan’s opener.
It was sublime and yet more evidence that City have solved their long standing leftback problem.
Once considered under constant threat of rotation, Cancelo has played more League minutes than any other City player this season, Ederson included.
Is it really any wonder, then, that it took both Rodri and Cancelo time to begin having the influence on games that they have had of late?
A little over two years into their City careers, though, they are beginning to decide games for the Premier League champions together, while proving that when it comes to new signings playing under
Guardiola, patience is a virtue. – The Independent