IT was a widely held opinion set on shifting sands last season to suggest that Manchester City would have been better off spending their £60m on a winger more suited to their system because there was always a lingering suspicion he would eventually come very good indeed. He was after all a recent PFA Player of the Year winner while his quick feet and unerring ability to trap a ball stone-dead when fired at him from any angle often had full-backs panicked and back-pedalling.
Even with his exasperating propensity to take an extra touch or three, and even with his refusal to put in an honest tackle, and even though his wanton individuality jarred with City’s complex conformity it was still a gamble to state that his time with the champions would ultimately end in disappointment.
Similarly, it is just as perilous now to state with any degree of certainty that his fortunes have turned around. Sure he has been one of City’s best players to this point and absolutely their most improved player. His selfish traits have been largely erased or at least suppressed. He has scored five goals and made six assists in eight league starts. Yet even in light of such evidence, it feels decidedly dicey to hang a hat on him and categorically acclaim the Algerian a success.
Riyad Mahrez is the first player to produce 10 shots in a single Premier League game so far this season.
Letting fly against his former club. pic.twitter.com/mHwXEzitJH
— Squawka Football (@Squawka) December 21, 2019
On reflection, this ambiguity is entirely fitting given that Mahrez is as difficult to pin down in assessment and description as he is to get the ball off. He is a winger who shoots more than he crosses, as illustrated in Saturday’s dismantling of Leicester that saw him become the first Premier League player this season to have ten attempts on goal. He can pluck a searching pass from the sky with the authority of a miser taking his change then immediately make the wrong decision, usually one that involves retaining possession of the ball while team-mates make incisive runs in vain. He flits between being devastatingly effective and decorative. He is divisive: some things to all men.
All of which makes him incredibly fun to watch, this infuriating, invigorating talent. If only he could add absolutes to his game then we would really be in business.
Yet according to Pep Guardiola those absolutes are already affirmed.
"He is a guy who always creates in that position,” the Catalan raved at the weekend. “Always scores goals, assists, goals, assists. He is a guy upfront that you have the feeling he is going to score a goal and that is a good feeling for us."
Pep Guardiola on Riyad Mahrez:
"We create the environment where we put Mahrez 1v1 against Chilwell and Riyad Mahrez 1v1 at the edge of the box is not easy to defend. With all the player, we play simple and then bam, put him 1v1. He could've scored 3/4 goals." pic.twitter.com/6Y1W5spBZp
— Man City | Superbia (@SuperbiaProeIia) December 21, 2019
The latter part of that statement is unquestionably true but ‘always’? Riyad Mahrez doesn’t do always: he doesn’t do reliability and consistency and though he must of course shoulder some of the responsibility for this it should be said that he is anything but wholly to blame.
In 2018/19 the 28-year-old made 13 league starts but on only two occasions was they consecutive while this term he has been selected eight times and again only twice have they been strung together. “Last season was difficult because I was out a lot of the time and it was difficult for me to always find my rhythm,” he admitted recently.
Yet if his stop-start introduction to City life makes some sense considering how his initial struggles contrasted so sharply to the sensational form of Leroy Sane, Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling what explains his regular rests now with Sane injured long-term, Bernardo a shadow of his former self and with Raheem permanently stationed on the other flank? By any reasonable estimation Mahrez has been a huge plus for the Blues, offering a capricious threat so necessary in the German’s absence. Why then deprive him of the confidence and momentum he clearly needs to maximise that?
Unbelievable Skill from Mahrez what a goal it could have been! pic.twitter.com/IKeVlrNNQ5
— KDB™ (@BelgianKing17) December 23, 2019
Against Leicester on Saturday the magical Algerian was entirely and unconditionally brilliant; an integral factor in City gaining three crucial points. Benefiting from tactics that isolated him time and again with former team-mate Ben Chilwell – a left-back he presumably skinned for giggles in training – Mahrez terrorised the Foxes’ back-line and struck up a formidable creative partnership with Kevin de Bruyne down the right; a partnership that would have undone any team from any era.
We can only imagine how much confidence has been derived from this performance and how desperate he now is to take that into the next game v Wolves on the 27th. Will he get the chance though? Recent history says probably not.
Let’s hope however that Pep goes against type and keeps the status quo because if someone were to ask me presently if I believe that Riyad Mahrez can become an important presence in this Manchester City side my response – for the first time –would be very short and to the point. Absolutely.
