It’s almost inevitable that barring any major disturbance to his Manchester City career, Sergio Aguero will become the club’s all-time leading goalscorer.
In netting to put his side in front in the first half of their 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough last Saturday, the Argentinian moved on to 150 for his career in England — two behind Joe Hayes and Billy Meredith, who are joint-fourth in City’s scorers list.
Aguero needs 28 more to take top spot from Eric Brook, a feat that will surely come sooner rather than later. It may be a tough ask for the final two-thirds of the current campaign, but if he can start to capitalise on the number of chances his teammates are creating then it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. It would depend on him staying fit for the entirety of the season, too — something that has been a struggle for him in the past.
Given that Aguero is already the club’s seventh-highest scorer in just 223 appearances, which works out at better than a goal every game-and-a-half, it seems unusual that manager Pep Guardiola is demanding more of the centre-forward.
It’s a subject that has cropped up time and again, eventually leading to questions about the striker’s future when he was dropped for the 4-0 defeat to Barcelona in the Champions League. It needed Guardiola to confirm such speculation was wrong and that he was simply pushing the Argentinian to be better.
Aguero has been a regular scorer for City since he arrived in the summer of 2011. His goals have fired the club to two league titles, as well as being a big contributing factor in their runs in the League Cup and Champions League. He’s never gone longer than six games without hitting the net and has dug the club out of many a hole in the past. The striker is also the second-quickest player to break the 100 goals barrier in the Premier League, with only Alan Shearer doing it faster.
His goalscoring clearly isn’t being questioned. When Guardiola says he’s demanding more, he isn’t suggesting that Aguero doesn’t find the net enough — though he’d would not have minded the Argentinian bagging one of his gilt-edged opportunities in Saturday’s stalemate with Middlesbrough to have put the game beyond doubt.
Instead, the manager is urging Aguero to be more involved in play when he doesn’t have the ball. It’s been a long-noted part of the striker’s game that he can be completely anonymous in a match and barely get a kick, but still walk off the pitch having scored twice. He comes alive when City have possession in and around the opposition’s penalty area, but he’s so often quiet when that isn’t the case.
Some would argue that’s what makes him one of the most dangerous forwards in the league. He can almost fool opponents into thinking he’s having an off-day and then hit them unexpectedly with a thunderbolt from range, or pop up in the six-yard box to tap home a loose ball. Guardiola is arguing he needs to be involved in more of the build-up.
The real change in Aguero’s style of play was most visible in his team’s recent 3-1 victory over Barcelona. For the reverse fixture to the one he’d been dropped in, he was thrust back into the starting lineup and named as a lone striker. He had to pressurise and harry the visitors’ defence to keep them under pressure as they tried to play from the back.
He did it perfectly. While Barcelona took the lead, it was down to the intelligent pressing of the home side that got them back into the match when the Catalan giants looked like easing through the gears to dominate. For the equaliser, Aguero smartly cut off Sergi Roberto’s route back to his goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen and then sprinted back to collect the defender’s loose pass into the middle.
The weekend before that, he grabbed the headlines for an outstanding brace in a 4-0 win at West Brom. Again, Aguero was closing down, hassling defenders and making a nuisance of himself off the ball.
The striker has since said that his manager was right to have dropped him following the last international break. Aguero risked returning from Argentina duty with an injury by playing through the pain barrier for his country and it didn’t go down well. It seems the forward is heeding Guardiola’s advice and getting on board with the changes to his game the Catalan is making.
Guardiola has a history of getting even more out of players that are already in that world class bracket. If Aguero can stay fit, the manager will have him breaking Brook’s record of 177 goals in a Manchester City shirt in no time at all.
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