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It was a particularly expensive piece of contingency planning. When Pep Guardiola was considering how Manchester City could cope if they were without Rodri, he put in a bid for Declan Rice. The Englishman instead went to Arsenal for a British record £105m. He will nevertheless take the field when City are deprived of Rodri: but in the opposition on Sunday.
And so Guardiola is confronted by the problem of how to replace the irreplaceable. “Maybe the best or in the top two or three best holding midfielders in the world,” he said of Rodri: his recognition was not dependent on a Champions League final winner, either.
The facts support his case. City lost a Community Shield shootout to Arsenal with Rodri in the team and missing his spot kick, but, including a Super Cup decided on penalties, they have won every other game he has started this season. They have lost both when he was suspended for his sending off against Nottingham Forest. The possibility is that, by attempting to throttle Morgan Gibbs-White, Rodri breathed new life into the title race.
Last season’s answer was simple: Ilkay Gundogan. Rodri missed few games then but sat out both a 6-3 Manchester derby win and a 3-0 FA Cup semi-final victory. The captain anchored the midfield in both games. Last week’s answer was less successful: the summer signings Mateo Kovacic and Matheus Nunes were paired at the base of the midfield in the 2-1 defeat to Wolves.
The Portuguese was removed at half-time in his first return to Molineux. The Croatian, who has flourished alongside Rodri, was less impressive without him: substituted after 64 minutes with a pass completion rate of 86 percent – fine at many a club, but not City – and when, as Guardiola noted, Wolves had used their hyperactive striker Matheus Cunha to hassle him. Arsenal, he feels, will have a more attacking approach.
Of course, City were supposed to have a ready-made alternative. Kalvin Phillips, however, is an afterthought. After Rodri’s red card, the Englishman declared it would be “probably the biggest week in my City career”. He made just his fifth start for the club in the Carabao Cup defeat to Newcastle and was promptly, and predictably, benched at Wolves. Even when he was brought on, it was after the rookie Oscar Bobb.
And the match at Molineux was notable for losses of different kinds: City’s first defeat of the season came in the absence of the five passers who roamed the midfield area for them in the Champions League final: the suspended Rodri, the departed Gundogan and the injured Kevin de Bruyne, John Stones and Bernardo Silva. The Portuguese is fit now, the Englishman on the comeback trail, though Guardiola said the Arsenal game will be too soon for him to start.
But there are times when City have felt in transition this season, lacking Gundogan’s innate class and De Bruyne’s abilities to split a defence with one pass, with Julian Alvarez excelling, but a striker providing a different type of attacking midfielder. Rodri has shouldered a still greater burden. Kovacic has settled smoothly, Nunes a bit less so. Without Stones, Manuel Akanji has been the defender who has stepped into midfield: impressively, but perhaps without the elan of the Englishman. The precocious performance of the teenager Rico Lewis in Wednesday’s 3-1 win over RB Leipzig may position him to start: perhaps Silva, who has begun many a major match over the years in a deep-lying role, will be charged with shielding the defence. The safest bet seems to be that Phillips will have a watching brief from the bench.
Arguably Rice would have been perfect, a player who could both partner and stand in for Rodri. To some extent, however, that is irrelevant. And so, in Guardiola’s eyes, is Rodri: for now, anyway. “He’s not here and we’ll have to find a solution with our players and how we want to play,” he explained. “In my mind when a player is not there he is completely out, and I don’t think about them.”
A refusal to make excuses, he feels, can underpin their approach. “I am not going to deny how important is Rodri, like how important is Kevin, but when they are not here we cannot start to cry,” he added. “So the influence is so big but he is not there and always we handle absences in the last years and move forward.”
But that has tended to be with Rodri, the man who barely missed a match. A couple of seasons ago, a hard-fought game at Arsenal was decided in the 93rd minute by a Rodri winner. There will be no repeat. But if the price paid for Rice underlines the importance of defensive midfielders, the danger is their importance is still more apparent when they don’t play than when they do.
