As yet, there has been no official confirmation from Manchester City of Rodri’s season-ending injury, but if there was, it would probably read something like this:
“This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen.”
Rodri is, without doubt, City’s most important player and one of the best on the planet at the moment. City fans have known his value for years and his global recognition rocketed during the summer thanks to the part he played in Spain’s European Championship victory.
Following a hamstring injury in the final against England, he was only just returning to action for City against Arsenal on Sunday when he sustained the suspected ACL injury City believe will keep him on the sidelines until the middle of next year.
The news throws into focus several different talking points at once. Is this the result of too much football? Only last week, Rodri talked once more about the demands on the body, revealing that players were considering a strike over the busy calendar.
Can City cope without him or will his absence be the difference between silverware or not? And could the club have done more in the transfer market to mitigate this scenario?
Rodri’s injury will intensify attention on the impact of so much football and the wider implications of the ongoing dispute between players and federations.
City’s coaching staff, meanwhile, are inevitably rocked by the news. They regard it as a major blow and one that has the potential to disrupt the entire season.
Following the good start to the campaign, with Pep Guardiola seeing enough to be convinced that complacency has still not crept into the serial winners, there is a mixture of hope and confidence that the squad will react well and push City forward regardless.
“My advice: when people doubt something about this club, we are going to break it, so be careful,” that was Guardiola’s verdict on the opening weekend, when it was put to him that they had managed to win without Rodri, something that had seemed impossible last season.
Rodri has lost one game in the past 18 months for club and country, but the numbers without him sum up the situation even better: he missed four Premier League games last season and City lost three of them. The one victory was against Luton Town when Guardiola believed his side could cope without him ahead of a Champions League game with Real Madrid.
The other three he was suspended for and while there was some poor timing in terms of the games he missed — they were against Wolves, Arsenal and Aston Villa, all away from home — Guardiola set the team up in a way that highlighted his importance as much as the actual results did.
Against Arsenal and Villa, the approach was to put a lot of bodies in the midfield and, essentially, try to survive until the end without conceding. It does not sound very City-like and it did not look like it, either. Fortunately for them, they could use him whenever they wanted for the remainder of the campaign and the next time they lost in 90 minutes was in the FA Cup final six months later.
It gave the impression that City — treble winners and four-in-a-row league champions — could barely function without him, which is quite remarkable given how good everybody else is.
A fairly major silver lining here, though, is that things somehow changed during the summer. Due to that hamstring injury picked up in the European Championship final, Rodri missed the first few weeks of the new season, forcing City into playing without him.
And they were… absolutely fine. City won the first four matches, with Rodri making his return for the second half of the victory over Brentford, and by that time his absence, and City’s ability to cope without him, had stopped being a talking point at all.
Playing without him for a few games is one thing, playing without him for the vast majority of the season is quite another and that is the challenge that faces City now.
There were many who felt that the club could or should have done more during the summer transfer window to find somebody who could come in for Rodri whenever he needed a rest or was unable to play.
The club themselves recognised the need for that when planning their business and showed an interest in Bruno Guimaraes, but they would not pay Newcastle’s asking price and never felt pressured to find an alternative, even when money became available following Julian Alvarez’s £82million exit to Atletico Madrid.
It was not as if they were always waiting to sign Ilkay Gundogan, with that opportunity only coming up about five days before he re-signed from Barcelona. That said, the German’s return will certainly help matters now and it is one major difference compared to last season.
The main Rodri stand-in so far has been Mateo Kovacic and he has largely done well, although he has been caught out for some dangerous opportunities at times in matches. Given the high bar Rodri has set, those lapses do get noticed and it is going to be very difficult for any one player, even the legendary Gundogan, to match his contributions.
What City have generally done over the years, though, is reinvent themselves. At the start of the 2017-18 season, City suffered injuries in defence, including one to captain Vincent Kompany, yet won the league with 100 points.
Two years later, Aymeric Laporte got injured early in the season, leading Guardiola to shuffle Fernandinho to centre-back and throw a raw new arrival (Rodri) into midfield. That time, the knock-on effects meant City could not keep pace with Liverpool as Jurgen Klopp’s side won the title at a canter.
Generally speaking, though, City adapt. No striker? Title. New striker? Title. Kevin De Bruyne has missed large chunks of seasons and it has never held them back. They have not had a proper left-back in about five years.
Keep throwing problems at Guardiola and he keeps solving them, which might explain why those above him felt comfortable going into another season without a like-for-like Rodri replacement.
That said, they know that one of those does not really exist: if they are that good, they will probably expect to play every week, but everybody knows that is not going to happen because Rodri is the main man. City have long known/thought that they would need to use two holding midfielders to cover for Rodri, but since then, they have re-signed Gundogan and just used Kovacic on his own anyway. The situation could also present an opportunity for youngster Rico Lewis to prove his credentials.
One of the most impressive things about this City team is that they have never really missed a player, no matter how brilliant they are.
Rodri’s absence will put that to the test once more, arguably more than ever.
City have already shown that the situation need not be quite as dire as it was last season, where winning a single match seemed hard enough without him. But given they have won the past three titles by an average of 2.67 points, it could be one fine margin too far.
(Top photo: Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images)
