The stats are scary yet they are very real. Manchester City have NOT won any of the six league games in which Yaya Toure has been absent this season. Yes, you read that right. Of the six games, the defending champions have failed to earn maximum points, taking just five points from five draws and one loss.
See, in the table below, Man City’s league stats with and without Yaya Toure this season. Of their 24 games, Yaya Toure played in 18 and they won 14 of those, drawing another two. With him in the squad, the team scored an average of 2.2 goals in each of those games, conceded 0.8 and took 2.4 points from each. On the flip side, without their Ivorien talisman, City are winless in six games, drawing five and losing one. They averaged only 1.2 goals per game, conceded 1.5 and have a miserable 0.8 points in each of those games.
Played: 18 – 6
Won: 14 – 0
Drawn: 2 – 5
Lost: 2 – 1
Scored p/g: 2.2 – 1.2
Conceded g/game: 0.8 – 1.5
Points p/game: 2.4 – 0.8To break it down, this means Yaya Toure is so important that the fortunes of the club depend on him. In a team bustling with talent and owners capable of buying the moon, if they need it, how come one single man has become so invaluable that the team automatically struggles without him in the line-up?
Jonathan Wilson, writing on the4 subject matter, had this to say: “The problem is Toure’s set of skills is not easily replicated. He is a playmaker with the capacity to thread a pass through the eye of a needle and to score spectacular goals both with long-range shots and sudden moments of tight, technical skill.
But he also has a prodigious engine, which means he is capable of starting in a far deeper position than a playmaker usually would, accelerating over the ground like a graceful midfield runner.
The tactical evolution of the game has meant central midfielders these days can usually be categorised as either a holder or an attacker; Toure is both. He clearly prefers to play higher up the pitch, but even when deployed like that with two holders behind him, he can drop back and offer defensive cover or link the back half of the team to the front.”
Wilson’s explanation is spot-on but only partly answers the question. City are an expensively assembled collection of superstars but, sadly, not a tightly-knit unit so they’ve had to rely on the brilliance of individual players to bail them out of sticky situations. This means, in effect, that players like Toure, David Silva and Sergio Aguero have become iconic figures at the Etihad.
Toure is indispensable because while Aguero scores vital goals and Silva can create magic when you least expect, the Ivorien can defend the line, turn creative playmaker and conjure goals when and where you least expect.
It is good when a player assumes such cult status but, on the flip side, when and if he becomes conscious of his player-power, it could become a double-edged sword. Yaya Toure got to that stage, of awareness of his power, when he threw a tantrum over the fact that the club did not accord him enough respect when he celebrated his 31st birthday last May.
On that occasion, his agent Dimitri Seluk told the media that Toure was upset and could leave the Etihad. Why, you may want to ask? He claimed that the club’s wealthy owners ignored him when the squad got to the United Arab Emirates to celebrate their Premier League title triumph.
“None of them shook his hand on his birthday. It’s really sick,” Seluk had said at the time. You may think this is silly but that is what you get when one player becomes as indispensable as Toure is to Man City now. He knows it. The club knows it too.
With AFCON duties done and dusted yesterday, Toure’s return from international duty can’t come quick enough for Man City although he will not be available for Wednesday’s game at Stoke City. Luckily, he will have enough time to rest before being called to duty for the home game with Newcastle United on February 21. City will also have the chance to field Toure’s international teammate, Wilfried Bony, bought in January from Swansea.
Whether his intervention in City’s yo-yo season will be too late, with leaders Chelsea already seven points clear, remains to be seen but the fact that is undeniable, even by his most virulent critics, is that Man City is Toure and Toure is Man City.
So, I ask, who says a tree cannot make a forest?
COMMENTS