Raheem Sterling and Jesse Lingard are doing well. Their standard of play is nothing more than OK but they are managing to come up with important goals. Because of this, they are selected for more games than not.
Raheem Sterling, right from the beginning of the season, against Bournemouth, has found the knack of scoring important goals and has done so consistently since then. Consequently he has been selected for the majority of City’s games and has been widely praised for his contribution to the team.
The fact that he scores a few goals is not in doubt. What we would question is his overall quality when compared with others in the side.
Bernardo Silva – Far more gifted than Raheem Sterling
He is clumsy on the ball and never seems to have it fully under control. He is more likely than any other player to lose possession. He is one of those whereby, when he receives the ball, fans are never really comfortable until he gives it to a more talented team mate and, at City, he has plenty of those from which to choose.
Unfortunately, he is just as likely to give it to a member of the opposing team as he is to one of his own.
As witnessed against Burnley, he is capable of missing an open goal and that particular miss, although it was certainly the most publicised, wasn’t his only one this season!
What he is good at is making runs which take away opposition defenders and, usually, he is quite an accomplished finisher.
Jesse Lingard is different. The difference is slight, but it is still there. He is also young, English and scores important goals for his club. The slight difference is that he doesn’t give the ball away quite as often as Sterling and probably wouldn’t have missed the open goal of which the City player was guilty.
In almost every other way he and Sterling are the same. Lingard will collect the ball and set off on a mazy run before falling over and losing it. The mazy run rarely seems to have a logical course and may just take him from one side of the pitch to the other.
Anthony Martial – Far more gifted than Jesse Lingard
He, like Sterling, is very easy to dispossess as he is a very light player and one gets the impression that a strong gust of wind would blow him over.
What is a constant source of amazement is that both Manchester City and Manchester United have better players who can’t get in the team as regularly as these two.
City have Bernardo Silva who, technically, is a far superior player to Sterling while United have both Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial who are spending more time on the bench than Lingard.
Whilst accepting that Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho know their players better than anybody else and appreciate where they will fit into the team it can also be frustrating for supporters when they see players who, in their eyes, are better than the ones on the pitch but they are restricted to cameo roles from the bench or are only selected when others are injured.
The fact is that all managers have their favourites and these are not always the best players!
And finally…..
Harry Kane – Benefitted from another Virgil van Dijk assist!
Sundays Premier League match between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur was as good as it’s build-up!
With Jürgen Klopp having spent £75 million on a player who only improved Liverpool’s defence for the game in which he didn’t play and having spent nothing on a goalkeeper, many people expected Spurs to win this one.
Virgil van Dijk was recalled to stand in front of Loris Karius and see if, between them, they could stop Harry Kane scoring any goals.
They couldn’t as he managed to score from the penalty spot, (thanks to another assist from the Dutchman, that’s two in two games now, what a buy he has been!), but the game still ended in a 2-2 draw.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 