There is not normally too much point in worrying about a Manchester City injury, but John Stones’ latest one is clearly bad news.
“Now we are in trouble,” City manager Pep Guardiola said on Tuesday night after seeing his team seal qualification for the Champions League last 16 for the 11th season in a row.
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Usually, City take any injury, suspension or even unexpected transfer in their stride. No left-back? No problem. No striker? They looked even better without one.
Rodri’s ban just over a month ago did prove to be an issue, however — they lost the three games he was out for — and, in Guardiola’s mind, that was linked to Stones’ concurrent injury absence as well.
Last night, he had already revealed Stones would be out for some time before he sat down for his post-match press conference, telling UK broadcaster TNT Sports: “John felt it again. I feel so sorry for him.
“It’s a big loss for us. John is so important for what he does. But recover and the season is long; he will be back stronger. I think he will be out for a while.”
Stones was withdrawn at half-time of Tuesday’s 3-0 win over Swiss visitors Young Boys, having spent the opening 45 minutes stepping into midfield in a completely new way: he started at centre-back and moved up into a deep-lying role as normal, but he did not partner another midfielder there, he stayed on his own. That allowed all of City’s other midfielders to push further up and form a more advanced line of three, looking to receive the ball between Young Boys’ lines.
It looked like a handy option in case City have to make do without Rodri again, and Guardiola was also asked about that in his press conference. He pointed out a big issue, though: without Stones, their versatility as a team is severely hampered. In fact, Guardiola probably felt comfortable resting Rodri for this match, a rare event, precisely because he had Stones available.
“The problem is when we don’t play John and Rodri at the same time,” he said. “Now we are in trouble, because we have to play a little bit differently, like what happened in Arsenal (the 1-0 defeat a month ago) and there we did not feel comfortable, still we are not prepared to play many variations.”
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In that game at the Emirates Stadium, the third of Rodri’s three on the sidelines and where Stones made his first league appearance of the season, albeit off the bench for the final 20 minutes, Guardiola shook his team up and tried something new: no width, everybody in the middle. He explained why afterwards:
“The fact we didn’t have Rodri, I wanted to put more protection with the ball, players who are really good with the ball, Bernardo (Silva), Kova (Mateo Kovacic) and Rico (Lewis), and have players in the middle (Julian Alvarez and Phil Foden) who have the ability to turn and attack, and that was the reason why we were not so wide.”
These things are all connected.
Speaking on Monday, also to TNT, Guardiola was asked why he moved Stones into the midfield role that was arguably the biggest factor in City winning the treble last season.
“I feel secure when I have a lot of players in the middle,” he said, emphasising that word. And he added it again for good measure. “A lot. And John can do that. He is so intelligent, and smart, and he makes incredible runs up front, is a good defender. That’s why I figured he could do it.”
💪 Winning run at home continues
🤕 John Stones injured and "out for a while"
It was a mixed evening for Pep Guardiola and Manchester City…#UCL | @julesbreach pic.twitter.com/dgotbyW7il
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) November 7, 2023
Without Rodri and Stones against Arsenal, Guardiola tried to compensate by essentially not playing any wingers, to get four or five men to do the job of two or three, and as he admitted yesterday, he did not really like it.
Of course, Rodri is available as far as we know. That is a major boost for them in this scenario, but the issue for Guardiola is that the key to last season’s success was Stones moving into midfield.
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It is not like Rodri and Stones are a double act as such, but the Spaniard is crucial and if there is another role that is nigh-on impossible to replicate, it is the one Stones plays. It is no surprise City looked much better upon his return in recent weeks; he had missed the first 11 games of the season with an injury after playing in the Community Shield.
The reason he has become so vital is because, after Erling Haaland arrived last summer, Guardiola needed to find a new way to achieve the same balance and establish the same control over matches as City had between 2020 and 2022, when they had no striker at all.
That was because despite Haaland offering them many things, it’s not an ability to drop outside the box and link up the play as well as City’s array of diminutive attacking midfielders who shone as false nines, such as Foden and Bernardo. With those players, City could outnumber their opponents, exchanging passes at dizzying speeds.
But having Haaland forced them to play another way and Guardiola had to come up with a new solution. It took until March and the answer was pushing Stones up from the back line into the middle, and then all the way forward, with those “incredible runs up front” that the manager mentioned on Monday.
It is not that Guardiola has no alternatives for that role: it was Lewis, the 18-year-old, who helped him realise as early as last Christmas that the answer to his problems in the final third could lie in defence, but it was Stones, due to his extra experience and size, who emerged as the best option to perform that job.
Lewis could be an option again now. He has developed a lot even since the turn of the year, although that is complicated because he would have to do it from right-back, which was the initial plan. Guardiola gave Kyle Walker the freedom of the Etihad Stadium to convince him to snub a transfer to Bayern Munich in the summer and dropping him just three months later is not so easy.
With Stones out for the first part of the season, Guardiola asked Manuel Akanji to step up into midfield. He did fine but was nowhere near as composed as the 69-cap England international, and is not the same threat making runs beyond the opposition’s defensive line.
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City did not entirely struggle without him in those games — without him and Rodri, yes — but they have certainly looked more comfortable with him in the side, much more like last season’s treble winners.
Guardiola did offer some solutions on Tuesday night; in the same breath as admitting City are “in trouble”, he said this: “I think Kalvin (Phillips) played really good minutes and the minutes that Nathan (Ake) played in that position, like Manu (Akanji) played sometimes… they can play it, they give us stability, control on the transitions and Manu and Nathan can do the simple things well, so we have another option.”
It must be said that even Guardiola did not sound especially convinced by what he was saying, but he will have to find a solution somewhere. The next five opponents are Chelsea, Liverpool, RB Leipzig (a chance to seal top spot in the Champions League group, so Guardiola will pick a strong team), Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa.
The reason the City boss started speaking about Stones in the first place during that pre-game interview on Monday was because he was discussing how he has always tweaked the plan according to the players at his disposal, rather than trying to jam square pegs into round holes.
“I always have some principles that don’t change much but after that, I assure you I adapt to the players I have — I’m not going to ask players to do something they are not able to do,” he said. “I am not going to play with Erling Haaland as a false nine, he does not have this ability, his ability is to go to the box. I adapt.
“I tried to play full-backs inside and they have the ability to play there, and now I’m playing with John more in midfield because it’s John. Without John, I couldn’t play that way. I adapt all the time to the quality and skills of the players.”
So what next?
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
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