BERNARDO Silva and Raheem Sterling are both heavily in the running to win this season’s Player of the Year award at Manchester City and in recent weeks each player has reminded us several times over why.
At home to Tottenham in a tense, tight must-win game that already feels like an eternity ago the Portuguese prince gave everything to the cause and then a little bit more, combining a quantity of mileage and quality of application that left those watching on vicariously worn out. It staggers the player he has become and it is stupefying to think there may yet be another level.
As for Sterling there would have been a memorable Champions League hat-trick just three days earlier had a stray Aguero knee not prompted VAR while against Burnley yesterday it was his endless innovation that ultimately broke Burnley’s stubborn low block.
Raheem Sterling has been directly involved in 26 goals in 20 games at the Etihad Stadium across all competitions this season:
⚽️ 19 goals
7 assistsOnly VAR denied him a hat-trick. pic.twitter.com/Mg6MlNOiYj
— Squawka Football (@Squawka) April 17, 2019
Throughout the course of this long campaign both Bernardo and Raz have unquestionably been Pep Guardiola’s go-to guys: integral and consistently brilliant yet as much as the Catalan continues to rely on them intuition tells us that he is increasingly leaning on others with greater significance as 2018/19 reaches its dramatic conclusion; on players who are imbued with qualities neither presently has nor can be expected to have at this stage of their development.
Fiercely fought title run-ins demand infinitely more from a team than the talent it took to elevate them into contention. It calls for vast reserves of experience, game-management and fortitude. It necessitates the overcoming of nerves and the summoning at will of ingrained self-belief. And ideally too this should all be applied through the learned behaviour of champions.
So it is that as a mercilessly testing April gives ways to the highly-pressurised environs of May, Vincent Kompany, David Silva and Sergio Aguero have come to the fore. The old guard. The legends.
Title-Clinching interception from Vincent Kompany. pic.twitter.com/D3US4kuhZk
— Erdem Yazıcı (@Kadikoy_Hero) April 28, 2019
Between them they have nine league title medals to chuck onto the table and over a thousand appearances in Blue. They have seen it, done it, and absorbed every high point and crushing blow from this extraordinary journey the club has undertaken in the modern era. They are the skin and bone and heart and soul of what to outsiders is an extravagant project, to us a way of life. They are Manchester City made manifest.
What they have offered City in these particularly heightened times cannot be articulated or calculated but let’s give it a go anyway. Up until the visit to Crystal Palace a fortnight ago Vincent Kompany had started eight Premier League games in 32 whereas of late he has featured prominently in three from the last four. That’s because these are challenges made for Vinny where the stakes are sky-high and a totem is needed for the rest of the side to look up to. At Turf Moor at the weekend he thrived in his element, heading every clearance and wrestling down danger and if for the rest of the season he is a peripheral leader, battling largely against his own failing body, he puts in the solitary hours for these afternoons when he is needed the most.
“On the pitch, he helps me through games, always talking and advising what positions I should take up,” Aymeric Laporte revealed recently of his and our captain.
David Silva, too, has endured a personal plight this term, namely an entirely uncharacteristic loss of form. At times it felt like the ageing wizard had forgotten some of his spells and so routine had his misplaced touches become that few were surprised when he was rested at home to Spurs. At Old Trafford though there could only be Merlin and the calmness he personifies. As his team-mates were dragged into a scrappy derby feud every easy pass reminded them: this is what we do lads. We’re better than that and this is how we beat them.
♂️ Cometh the hour…
⚽ Sergio Aguero breaks the deadlock, joining Henry as the only player to have scored 20+ #PL goals in five consecutive seasons
Can Burnley respond? #BURMCI pic.twitter.com/7kkxe6GLnL
— Unibet (@unibet) April 28, 2019
As for Sergio his relentless avalanche of goals – 229 and counting since his arrival in Manchester – is merit enough but now there is a fire in his belly too. In his first season under Pep the Argentine made three assists; this time out he’s made eight but even that stat pales to his work-rate and galvanization.
To possess a striker who has now scored 20+ league goals in five consecutive seasons is a blessing. For that striker to also be on some crazy impelled crusade is a lottery win.
Should City hold off Liverpool and lift the trophy under fireworks on May 12th then their star performers Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling will be lauded the most and rightly so. But City supporters will know who hauled them over the line. They’ll know who we turned to when it mattered because it’s always these three we turn to when it matters. They have yet to let us down and it is highly doubtful they ever will.
