Mavericks are in short supply at the moment, not particularly wanted or needed in this age. It’ll change once football enters another cycle but for now, runners and power win. The ability to follow set, meticulously planned NFL-style instructions win.
Rayan Cherki is not any of those things. He is not a modern-day attacker. He is a freer spirit, somebody who other top clubs must have passed on. He is from an era long gone – and that is no bad thing.
So when one source revealed recently that Pep Guardiola had been lamenting to friends that the game is becoming too reliant on data, complaining that nobody plays off the cuff anymore, it made sense why Manchester City parted with £31million to land him from Lyon in the summer.
Cherki has yet to play a full 90 minutes in the Premier League for City, largely because of injury. It’s been an eased introduction to English football and Guardiola said after defeat at Aston Villa last week that the Frenchman’s selection or otherwise is based on ‘other aspects’ aside from his extraordinary talent.
The City boss expanded on that idea before beating Bournemouth, saying that the team requires balance and suggested that the side picked at Villa Park was ultimately too top-heavy.
That was in the context of how he manages to squeeze Cherki and Phil Foden into the same starting line-up, which felt like a conversation for another day given Andoni Iraola’s Cherries punish like no other on turnovers. Bournemouth never appeared to be fertile ground for the experiment but circumstances dictated otherwise and the end result was none too shabby as a first attempt.
When Tijjani Reijnders was not deemed fit enough to feature from the off, the pair of them were thrown together. It seemed a surprising move yet the day ended with Cherki recording two assists, Foden one and both of their fingerprints across all three.
‘Cherki and Foden play one touch, bam bam,’ Iraola said somewhat cheerily, as if revelling in the street ability they can bring. ‘Then against Erling Haaland if you lose one metre, you are not recovering. It is going to be three metres at the end of the play.’
Foden became the youngest City player ever to reach 200 league appearances and the last few of those have been a natural progression to his development. Guardiola said recently that he wants Foden as close to goal as possible but the way in which he has been knitting City together from a deeper starting point is possibly offering them another unexpected string.
Is this how he is able to name both men alongside each other? They created five chances between them, directly combining for two goals – the second of which, for Nico O’Reilly, relied on Foden’s low centre of gravity on the half turn – and dovetailed with an uplifting exuberance. Just as Villa was not disastrous, this was not perfect, although the signs are broadly positive.
City’s squad were given Friday off so organised themselves a Halloween party the night before. The self-deprecating theme was, ‘I know what you did last season’ – a horror by their standards – and it’s fair to say they never quite had this level of sharp patterns through the lines, even if it will take some time to find consistency.
‘Rayan’s vision in the final third is so good, the consistency, the courage to play,’ Guardiola said, while stressing he stills needs to find the rhythm of the Premier League – noticeable by his reactions when the 22-year-old lost a couple of balls in dangerous areas after half time.
‘He has this special talent, the connection with the people up front that is unique.’ That should be no great shock: Cherki had 20 assists for Lyon in all competitions last season. Over the past year, none of his contemporaries in Europe’s top five leagues have managed more assists, expected assists, shot-creating actions or progressive passes per 90.
That is why, when Guardiola called him in to rest with 17 minutes left, the Etihad rose as one. An appreciation for a maverick whose pass completion of 85 per cent showcases how many killer balls he was attempting.
These dwindling number of mavericks have this unifying quality, partly why fans always paid their money to attend at a weekend. Somewhere that has been lost in recent years and it would be a feather in the cap of City’s coaching staff if they can harness Cherki to such an extent that some flamboyance returns to this league.
