IF a poll had been conducted over the summer asking Manchester City fans what they most feared ahead of 2019/20 a long-term injury to Aymeric Laporte would have surely topped it. Now, after a clunking challenge on Brighton’s Adam Webster on Saturday that troubling what-if has become a bleak reality.
The 25-year-old French defender will likely be out of action for the foreseeable future – “it doesn’t look good,” was Pep Guardiola’s early assessment though we will imminently know more – and that leaves City with only two principal centre-backs, one of whom is presently recovering from a muscle strain.
The returning John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi aside, City’s only other natural options in the centre of defence as the international break leads into a startling acceleration of fixtures are the teenagers Eric Garcia and Taylor Harwood-Bellis and though each possesses incalculable promise realistically they are at least a couple of seasons away yet from staking a regular starting spot. That leaves us with the unnatural option. The experiment. The risk.
Before we get to Fernandinho’s conversion to centre-back however – a reimagining that Guardiola has been planning, and indeed has such faith in that he was willing to forego the signing of an expensive specialist this summer to replace Vincent Kompany – we should stay a little while on Laporte’s injury and its probable significance.
Man City injuries:
Leroy Sane
Gabriel Jesus
Ben Mendy
John Stones
Aymeric LaporteThis still doesn’t rule them out of the title race. Their squad depth is crazy.
— Josh (@ftbljosh) September 1, 2019
The ‘best left-sided central defender in Europe’: that’s what Guardiola called him prior to the weekend and those who disagreed with that judgement had every right to do so but those who scoffed really should watch City more often. Last term Laporte was consistently magnificent and routinely put in the kind of accomplished displays that prompt a contradiction only the rarest of defenders can produce. On the one hand you were left gob-smacked; astounded week in, week out. On the other you took him for granted.
He was easily as pivotal to Manchester City’s successes as Virgil van Dijk was to Liverpool’s and his loss is substantial given the fine margins that separated the teams last year, a fractionally fought contest that is only set to continue.
Still, football looks relentlessly and immediately forward, as is its wont, so understandably the conversation is already centring on the solution rather than the far-off consequences of the problem and in the unlikely event that Stones and Otamendi remain fit and available for the duration of Laporte’s absence that solution appears to be a 34-year-old, 5 ft 9 Brazilian playing out of position.
If that reads as a touch disparaging it is not meant so. Rather it’s to illustrate the scale of the task at hand for both player and manager alike but reassurances can be found in various places; suggestions that the venture might just work and who knows, even flourish.
Most pertinently Guardiola has form for transforming midfielders into elite centre-halves. Javier Mascherano is of course the famous example, recalibrating his talents into a ball-playing, forward-frustrating defender of note as Barcelona dominated globally for much of the last decade. But at Bayern Munich too the Catalan successfully metamorphosed Javier Martinez in a similar vein and there in the heart of Bayern’s back-line the player’s metronomic passing and erudite reading of movement proved to be an enormous asset.
Fernandinho started out as a box-to-box midfielder, adapted to the DM role, and now provides decent cover at CB.
His versatility and evolution under different managers is very underrated. pic.twitter.com/ZL2fDa7Ujg
— (@Priceless_Silva) August 31, 2019
Just as reassuringly Fernandinho has already been deployed in his expected new role; on four occasions in fact and only once out of necessity. He was first stationed there away to Shakhtar Donetsk two campaigns ago (the revision strangely going under the radar at the time) and the ploy was used again at Schalke last season as City triumphed 3-2.
In the latter Ferna gave away a penalty and such rashness remains a concern going forward but then Arsenal came to the Etihad and the Brazilian gave a pristine archetype of how his conversion could benefit City, stepping up whenever possible to further smother their opponents offensively. He said later of his responsibility that afternoon: “When I have the ball I go to the middle, join Gundo but without the ball I join the back four. Playing back there you have the whole vision of the pitch and going to the middle I know what I have to do because it's the same position I've played all season.”
This makes a whole lot of sense considering how many teams ‘set their stall’ out against City’s constant attacking dissection because for all the talk of Guardiola’s men being susceptible to quick breaks in reality a vast swathe of each season sees them with a man surplus at the back who could be better utilised ten yards forward.
The fourth occasion incidentally was at the weekend against Brighton and for 53 minutes Fernandinho was composed, controlled, and excellent.
The last two examples however, as advantageous and encouraging as they were, also elicit concern. Because across a 70-game year teams will not always seek solely to contain City – or alternatively be as open but inferior as Brighton – and the notion of Ferna and Otamendi tackling the ferocious and fluid front three of Liverpool at Anfield is a jittery one. Shackling the continent’s finest in the Champions League’s closing stages likewise is one hell of a new trick for an old dog to learn.
Make no mistake about it, this is a risk. This is an experiment. Just because it’s one that has been chosen and planned for doesn’t make it any less of a roll of the dice.
