Newcastle 1-1 Man City: Pep Guardiola begins solving Rodri puzzle with Lewis & Kovacic
It took Pep Guardiola about 20 seconds to signal that he was bored with talking about Manchester City’s absent midfielder Rodri.
He took his seat in the media conference room at St James’ Park less than half an hour after his side’s 1-1 draw with Newcastle.
The first question? Does that game show how pivotal Rodri is to your team?
Guardiola drew breath and replied: “We played really good with Kova [Mateo Kovacic], Bernardo [Silva] and Rico [Lewis].”
Four of the seven questions posed to Guardiola centred around Rodri in some form.
And that was after a similar line of questioning immediately after the televised early kick-off on Saturday, with Guardiola telling BBC Match of the Day that his midfield were “magnificent”.
Eventually, Guardiola directly addressed the issue at hand.
“I know you are going to ask me all the time,” he said. “We are going to miss Rodri for his physicality and presence. But he is not there.
“I would love Rodri, Oscar Bobb, Kevin [de Bruyne] and [Nathan] Ake to be here. But it is what it is. Sometimes it happens and we have to adapt.”
So, with City to miss Rodri for the rest of the season as he recovers from cruciate knee ligament surgery, how did they adapt in their first Premier League game without him?
Guardiola has already said the answer will not be straightforward.
At Newcastle, he went for Kovacic as the holding player, with the vastly experienced Ilkay Gundogan and inexperienced Rico Lewis ahead of him. On Tuesday in the Champions League against Slovan Bratislava, it might be John Stones or Manuel Akanji. Or Bernardo Silva might drop deep, as he did for the final nine minutes after Lewis had been replaced by Savinho.
Statistics wise, Kovacic completed 30 passes in the final third of the pitch, more than anyone else in the game. However, overall, City’s passing accuracy was down at 87.5%, their lowest in a league game since March.
In the thousands of words written and dozens of data graphics produced this week regarding why Rodri is so important, some of it remains unquantifiable.
The Spain international brings a calmness in intense situations; has an instinctive awareness of space; and absorbs information and then delivers on it.
To that end, a huge amount is being asked of Lewis, who is only 19 and just over 50 games into his senior career, even though he has already shown enough ability to earn two England caps.
At Newcastle, Lewis had a quiet game, playing to the right of Gundogan. But maybe that is a good thing. He needs to walk before he can run.
“With intelligent players, you don’t have to talk too much,” said Guardiola. “Football is a movement game and Rico reads perfectly what we have to do.
“He played exceptionally well. He is really good in the small spaces. He is young and he will improve.”
Lewis has an unconventional athletic background given his dad is a kickboxer. The youngster said recently that he used some kickboxing training to get fully fit during the build-up to pre-season and clearly the mental and physical resilience required to compete in a sport as fierce as that can easily transfer into the football arena.
More pertinently, Lewis also said he sees himself as a number eight rather than in the full-back role where he emerged from City’s academy immediately after the 2022 World Cup, which should help him become what Guardiola wants him to be, even if he may find himself swapping positions on a regular basis.
It is fair to assume Guardiola will get irritated on a regular basis if the absence of Rodri is used as a reason for anything that doesn’t go their way.
“We have suffered here before even with Rodri,” said Guardiola. “At the free-kicks especially with [Dan] Burn, [Fabian] Schar and Joelinton.”
Former City defender Joleon Lescott, analysing the game for TNT, said it was “too early” to say that Rodri’s absence was a factor in the result and reminded everyone Newcastle are a good side, unbeaten now in 11 home league games.
Such are the ridiculously high standards City have set for themselves, two Premier League games without a win represents their worst run since last November, when they embarked on a four-match winless streak.
The first three of those were draws, all of which Rodri started.
It is that reality which underpins Newcastle boss Eddie Howe’s assessment of City – and Guardiola.
“Pep is an innovator,” Howe said. “He is arguably the best ever and he has taken the English game to another level.
“Rodri glues everything together and is pivotal to what they do but I think we all make too much of a team missing one player.
“It is very difficult to replace players because they are unique, but you have to – and one of our challenges was to try to predict their starting line-up and system because we knew they would reshuffle and do something different.
“In the end, it was our best performance of the season.”
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