Had Manchester City got their way, Alexis Sanchez would have walked out at the Etihad on Sunday wearing sky blue. Instead, he remains an Arsenal player, and will try to inflict the first defeat of the season on a manager who spent most of the summer trying to sign him. The Chilean was Pep Guardiola’s No.1 target during the off-season, and has been linked again with a January move, but his side have matured so quickly you wonder if he really needs Sanchez at all anymore.
Rarely has a team made such a furious start to a new Premier League season. After 10 games, City already have +29 goal difference and are on course to smash the all-time scoring record with a month to spare. They have had more shots than anyone else in the division, more touches in the opposition box and significantly more possession.
The transformation has been two-fold. Firstly, their defence has improved immeasurably; their stifling combination of pressing and possession has given up just 18 shots on target – of which Ederson, a goalkeeper actually capable of making saves (unlike the porous Claudio Bravo) has kept out all but six. And secondly, their finishing has totally transformed this season.
Guardiola’s first campaign in charge was hamstrung by the profligacy of his attackers, it is why Sanchez felt like such an important part of the puzzle he was putting together. Guardiola’s side were top for Expected Goals (or xG) – a metric that identifies the quality of chances created and conceded – by some margin, racking up around 15xG more than Chelsea. Yet the eventual champions scored five more actual goals.
What is Expected Goals?
Expected Goals – also abbreviated to ExpG or xG – measures the number of goals a team would score based on the amount and quality of the shots they create. Each scoring attempt is weighted depending on a number of factors, predominantly shot location and shot type, but can also include the type of assist (though-ball or cross?), the speed of the attack and other factors. Opta, for example, have analysed over 300,000 shots to work out the likelihood of a chance being scored.
Expected Goals essentially rates how good a chance is, and how likely it would be to result in a goal, and attributes a value accordingly: 0.51xG means a goal should be scored 51% of the time. It is an excellent way to ascertain whether a team were knocking on the proverbial door, or struggling to trouble the opposition keeper and simply trying their luck from range. Of course, that doesn’t mean a bad chance can’t produce a goal – Frank Lampard made a career out of doing that!
That was down to both Chelsea’s extreme clinicalness, which they have unsurprisingly not been able to maintain this season, and wastefulness on the part of City. In total they created 101 ‘big chances’ last season, more than any other side, but only ranked seventh for the conversion of those chances.
That has all changed this season. Now they boast the best shot conversion in the Premier League (up 6%), while their shot accuracy has jumped up by an even bigger percentage. In a world of marginal gains, City have taken a giant stride forward. Of the eight players to have scored six or more goals in the Premier League this season, four play for City.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that none of that quartet – Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sane and Gabriel Jesus – were signed during a summer window in which City spent over £200m. The priority then was strengthening the defence, with Sanchez the only significant attacking target. As much as his critics like to point out that Guardiola needs premium players to play his brand of football, their current form is a victory for coaching – albeit already extremely talented players.
While City have been scoring freely, Sanchez has netted just a solitary goal for Arsenal in a match that was already won (the final goal in a 5-2 victory over Everton). Admittedly, his involvement this season has been disrupted by a number of factors: the transfer rumours that engulfed him at the start of the campaign, injury and Chile’s disastrous failure to qualify for the World Cup.
Guardiola’s interest made enormous sense just a couple of months ago. Sanchez had scored 24 goals, a figure bettered only by out-and-out strikers Harry Kane and Romelu Lukaku in the Premier League and four more than Aguero managed. No other City player scored more than seven times – and that was Jesus, who arrived mid-season and only played nine times. Sanchez also converted 11% more of his big chances than the City average.
But suddenly Sane and Sterling have exploded. The latter is an especially ironic development, given that Arsenal had requested he be included in a player-plus-cash swap deal for Sanchez. Guardiola refused; he saw the potential. Of players to have received at least five big chances this season, Sterling now boasts the best conversion rate (83%) of anyone in the league – 17% up on City’s best finisher from last season, Jesus.
He was at it again in Naples, sealing the victory with what has become a typically composed finish. Not so long ago Sterling seemed to get flustered in front of goal, fluffing chances and scuffing shots. Now he looks assured, confident and deadly. The entire team do.
And yet the perfectionist in Guardiola knows his side can be even better. The last week has just hinted at some of last season’s problems reemerging. City let Napoli back into the match on Wednesday, while against West Brom they were utterly dominant, but also wasteful. ‘We created I don’t know how many chances,’ said the former Barca boss afterwards. ‘Of course we have to improve, to be clinical. West Brom created just three chances and score two goals, whereas we created so many but didn’t take them.’
Pep Guardiola on Alexis Sanchez and Raheem Sterling
On Alexis:
‘He’s an Arsenal player, his manager has to speak about him. You know the situation before when the transfer window was open but now it’s closed. Let’s not talk about that. He’s such an important player for them, for the talent he has and we have to try to control him. Let’s just focus on that. You know my opinion on the players I have. Alexis, you know my opinion, but he’s an Arsenal player – so it’s not correct to talk about that, especially before we play them.’
On Sterling:
‘I think he’s enjoying scoring goals, he’s not scared, he’s not afraid to take a risk. And now he’s seeing how fun, how good it is to score goals. Mikel Arteta is working many, many hours and days after training specifically about the last action on the pitch – that control in the last moment to make the right movement in the final three or four metres. For himself, Raheem has wanted to stay there, to improve, to practise, to shoot at the goalkeepers. It’s part of the mentality he needs. He knows a striker has to score goals and he has to do that if he wants to achieve the next step. You won’t survive in the high level teams in his position if you don’t score goals.’
For that reason, perhaps City would be wise not to go too cold on Sanchez. He carries a certain risk – he is a player who often operates outside of the team structure, a renegade, and lost possession more times than any other player last season, while he did not take to Guardiola’s methods especially well at Barcelona. But at his best he is a phenomenal talent.
For all City’s attacking weapons, they do not have anyone quite like the Chilean. He is a player capable of producing a moment of game-winning brilliance out of nothing, a sensational dribbler and, as displayed last season, a proficient finisher when pushed further forward.
It is not dissimilar to Newcastle United’s Faustino Asprilla moment back in the 1995/96 season. The Colombian arrived to try and push their title assault over the line, but was ultimately blamed for their failure to hold off Manchester United’s charge. In truth, he did not play particularly badly, but Newcastle’s form fell away, partly as they tried to accommodate something of a free spirit.
Sanchez does not carry that kind of risk, but you can see the dilemma. Right now Manchester City are a finely tuned machine with Guardiola delicately balancing and juggling all his attacking options. But such astonishing form surely cannot continue, Guardiola has said as much himself. Opponents will find a way to stop them eventually. But they might not be able to find a way to stop a City side that also contains Sanchez, and that is a proposition that will be very hard to resist.