Player Focus: More Needed from Sterling as Injuries Threaten to Curtail City’s Season

"The thing that excites me the most is the world-class squad we have and knowing we have a team that is capable of winning things year in, year out," Raheem Sterling told Manchester City's official website soon after joining for a mind-boggling £44m over the summer. "The more quality players that are around you, the more quality it brings out in you so I can't wait to get started and play alongside them."

Sterling’s performances so far this season wouldn’t suggest he’s benefitted immensely from the rigours of training with the star-studded squad he alluded to when he joined City three months ago. Other than forging what looks like a potentially dangerous partnership with Aleksandar Kolarov on City’s left flank, Sterling hasn’t kicked on as many expected. His early season form has largely flown under the radar during City’s rip-roaring start to the new campaign, but the England starlet will now find himself under microscopic attention with both Sergio Agüero and David Silva set for long-term injury layoffs.

Respective knocks picked up by the forward duo during the international break means Manuel Pellegrini faces the prospect of being without both talismanic figures for up to a month, and in Agüero’s case, perhaps even longer. Upcoming fixtures could have been more taxing for the current league leaders, but they will still have to manoeuvre through a Manchester derby and two pivotal Champions League fixtures against Sevilla without two players that have played a direct hand in 14 of their 19 league goals so far this season.

At 20, Sterling isn’t likely, nor expected to, completely fill the void left by Agüero and Silva. These are two players that, when combined, have played a direct hand in just under half of City’s 383 league goals since the start of the 2011/12 campaign (184). Unsurprisingly, in this time City’s win ratio in the league drops from 70% with the duo in the starting XI to 64% when both are absent.

City’s decision to offload Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic without bringing in any like-for-like replacement over the summer may prove a costly misjudgement on their part, particularly when you consider Agüero’s inability to stay fit for prolonged periods and Wilfried Bony’s questionable purpose in this current City system.

With that in mind, the goalscoring and creative burden will instead fall firmly on the shoulders of Kevin De Bruyne and Sterling. The former has made a seamless transition to life back in England, having scored three goals and registered two assists in just four league appearances, whereas Sterling is currently one of City’s lowest rated players of those to have started at least three league matches this season, according to WhoScored (6.93).

Having come in for criticism for the average age of their squad last season, the decision to sign Sterling would have been made with one-eye on the future. However, as has increasingly become the norm in football, Pellegrini will be hoping for immediate improvements from the City No.7, with his job thought to be very much in the short-term.

Sterling’s return of 18 goals in 85 league appearances at Liverpool isn’t a record that would inspire much confidence on paper, but the compose manner in which he took his goal - ironically in a 3-2 win over City in the 2013/14 campaign - does, however, give some inclination that Sterling could become the regular contributor City now need.

However, rather ominously for City, Sterling isn’t a player that is currently brimming with confidence and only needing to add goals to his armoury to become that mercurial player. The Englishman’s performances have actually tailed off since joining City and there will need to be an immediate improvement for Sterling to not only help Pellegrini’s men maintain their title challenge, but also vindicate the enormous price paid for his signature.

In comparison to last season, which saw Sterling grasp more responsibility in the absence of Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge, the City winger has gone from averaging a successful dribble every 29 minutes to requiring just short of an hour to complete one this time around (58 minutes). Stoke's Jonathan Walters is requiring 60 minutes per successful dribble this season, to shed further light on the context of that drop.

It has now been over a month since Sterling scored his first competitive City goal in a 2-0 win over Watford at the end of August. Four league games later and Sterling is only testing the goalkeeper with one shot per game, which isn’t encouraging when you consider the forward’s goal record and well-documented weakness of finishing. Worryingly, for Pellegrini, his pacey forward isn’t making up for his lack of goals with creative spark, either. Sterling is also making fewer key passes per game (1.7) and being dispossessed more often (2.6 times per game) than he was last season for Liverpool (both 2.1, respectively), while his wait to register an assist exceeds his current goal drought.

You can’t even attribute Sterling’s dip in form to being starved of possession, as Gareth Bale’s agent claimed was the case for the Welshman last season at Real Madrid. The statistics reveal Sterling is actually just using the ball differently. The winger is still touching the ball as often as he did at Liverpool (56 touches per game), but rather than looking to carry play forward, he is instead passing it more often, which would perhaps offer some explanation behind what has been a tentative start to life for him at the Etihad.

Sterling is making more passes per game (38.1) this season and notably completing more short passes (32.1 per game), which would suggest the youngster is looking to supply the likes of Silva and Yaya Touré more frequently than he is looking to influence matches using his statistically calculated strength of ‘dribbling’, for example.

It’s unlikely Pellegrini would have deliberately restricted Sterling in this way considering the price paid for him, but it’s something that will need to change if City are to keep ahead of their title rivals until Agüero and Silva can return, at least. A criticism of City squads in years gone by is that they’ve crumbled when their main players have been unavailable; now is the time for Sterling to change that and keep City on track towards their third Premier League title in five years.

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