Newcastle shows Guardiola that he will not solve the problem of Rodri’s absence anytime soon | Manchester City

There are times when a soccer field can look very small and one wonders if, in this day and age of hyper-fit, hyper-organized athletes, perhaps the playing area needs to be increased or one or two players removed from each side. And sometimes the playing field looks huge, a giant patchwork of Rodri-shaped holes.

There is a danger when Rodri’s absence is so urgent, when everyone is so aware that Rodri is not there, that it feels like every pass in the final third has been blocked by Rodri.

At times it seemed as if he was a massive fire blanket, fending off attacks from opponents on both sides of the pitch at the same time, but in reality he was not omnipresent. And yet it is also true that if Rodri had been there, Newcastle probably wouldn’t have equalized in the way they did.

The second half was a bit of a mess; There was a 30-second period where the ball was thrown one way in the air and the other that wouldn’t have been out of place 30 to 40 years ago. And then, completely without warning, a gap opened up, Joelinton pushed the ball through and Anthony Gordon ran on, flicking the ball past Ederson and crashing over him. It’s just not the kind of goal City concedes.

Kyle Walker was mysteriously five meters behind the City line, playing Gordon on the side, but just as telling was the space in front of Manuel Akanji, exactly the kind of area Rodri usually patrols and attacks through both his presence and suppressed through more direct interventions.

A draw away to Newcastle is by no means a bad result for City. But it’s not a win, and that not only gives the other teams at the top of the table a modicum of hope, but also extends one of the Premier League’s most remarkable statistics: since the first week of October 2022, when City beat Manchester United, 6-3, that is, two years before City next play in the competition, Luton are the only team they have beaten in a league game without Rodri in the team.

Since the beginning of February 2023 – 18 months ago – there have only been two ways to beat Manchester City: either Rodri was missing or they had Scott McTominay at their side. It would be absurd to suggest that City are dependent on a single player, an idea completely at odds with Guardiola’s obsession with team cohesion, but Rodri was also often involved through his passing and, perhaps even more so, his positioning the creator of this cohesion.

It is not directly replaceable; No player of his level could be. As Guardiola pointed out this week, the reason why players are hot for the Ballon d’Or is usually because they offer something extremely unusual, something that others cannot easily replicate. All City can do is try to re-establish some of their influence through a mix of other players.

In this respect, the decision to bring Ilkay Gündogan back from Barcelona a week before the transfer window closed seems extremely prescient, even if Gündogan appears, at least for now, significantly less sharp than when he left; It may take some adjusting, or it may simply be that he is 33 years old. But whatever problems City have with covering Rodri would have been much worse without the Germany international. There appears to be no prospect of Kalvin Phillips returning from his loan spell at Ipswich.

On Saturday, Gündogan operated on the left as the most advanced of the three central midfielders, with Mateo Kovacic in the Rodri role at the base and Rico Lewis as a balancer on the right. All three finished the game with a pass completion rate above 90%, although not quite as high as the 93.4% Rodri averaged this season.

But it’s not just about holding the ball, tackling, interceptions or creating chances. Rodri is a master at influencing games in ways that statistics struggle to capture, simply by being in the right place and shaping the game around him just by his presence.

About five minutes after the equaliser, City were remarkably battered. There was a moment, just briefly, when Newcastle threatened to overwhelm them. The arrival of Phil Foden for Gündogan, a more incisive presence further up the pitch, has quelled this, but it was thought that this kind of informality simply couldn’t happen when Rodri was around, just as disarray under Mary Poppins’ Supervision.

Football is essentially a chaotic game. Guardiola’s big project is to control it and, with the exception of Sergio Busquets, no one has fixed it in the same way as Rodri.

There is little chance that the issue of his absence will be resolved any time soon.