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Five days ago, Rodri was reflecting on his workload. He said 70 or 80 games a season was too much. About 40 or 50 would be about right. And then came the moment when Manchester City might wonder how many more games he will be able to play than his modest figure of three.
Instead of players going on strike, as Rodri suggested, matches could be saved by letting them spend longer on the treatment table. If Arsenal can find enough reasons for encouragement from their players 2-2 draw At the Etihad Stadium, no one could fathom their set-piece expertise, rearguard action and resilience. This extended beyond the auspicious full debut of Riccardo Calafiori, the defiance of William Saliba and the reflexes of David Raya.
Rodri being out: A game away, possibly far from the title race, will likely change it irrevocably. “I haven’t spoken to the doctor,” said Pep Guardiola. There is no diagnosis yet, but a confession. Rodri should not have gone out, especially in a match of this magnitude, unless he needed to. A knee injury can be serious. After being caught by Kai Havertz after three seconds, then turned in by Thomas Partey after a quarter of an hour, he limped off as City thought he was invincible and indestructible.
Guardiola wondered what it all meant. “Rodri is strong,” he said. “He goes off the pitch in this action because he feels something, otherwise Rodri stays there. He is the best holding midfielder in the world. He has the potential to win the Ballon d’Or… I would like him to win it.”
Winning is Rodri’s job: for club and country. Or, failing that, not losing: his only defeat in nearly 18 months was in an FA Cup final. And if John Stones equalised in the 98th minute Continuing this trend, the longer Rodri remains injured, this statistic will remain true but City’s chances of losing will increase.
Even though Rodri wasn’t playing particularly well, City lost control in the first half against Arsenal; without him, they conceded twice. He inspires confidence: with his reliability, with his reputation, with his body, with his ability to do every aspect of the game. The numbers show his importance. Last season Rodri was suspended for four games: City lost all four matches, three in the Premier League, one in the Carabao Cup.
If Mateo Kovacic made Rodri’s dependency look easy with his masterclass at Chelsea in August, the Croatian, according to him, is not the happiest manning the midfield. He is more of a passer than a destroyer. Rodri is both.
The downside of having the best players in the world in their place is that any substitute is automatically a downgrade. There are two indispensable players in the City squad: Erling Haaland and Rodri. The reliance on them is also compounded by the fact that they are the only specialist striker and defensive midfielder at Pep Guardiola’s disposal. The sale of Julian Alvarez, an excellent deputy to the Norwegian, and the disastrous City career of Kalvin Phillips, supposedly Rodri’s understudy, has only exacerbated this.
So far, City have been carried by Haaland’s goals. He has scored 10 goals in five league games. The rest of the team has three. Meanwhile, without Rodri, they have become accustomed to conceding goals. A few weeks ago, Guardiola named Manuel Akanji, Rico Lewis, Nico O’Reilly, Stones and Kovacic as people he could use at the base of midfield. Still, everyone would be better off with Rodri instead of them.
Perhaps the best player has rejoined since Guardiola outlined his options: Ilkay Gundogan, with his sharp football mind, wonderful technique and ability to control the game. Guardiola has tried to use him more in the final third than the middle third since his return. After Haaland, Gundogan may look like City’s best goal-scoring threat.
All of that talk was largely hypothetical. But the injury could come from exhaustion: Rodri sat out the Euro 2024 final. It was his 250th game in four seasons. If he is ruled out for some time again, it could bring back echoes of Kevin De Bruyne a year ago: getting injured in the Champions League final and then getting injured again at the start of the next season. Rodri has generally warned about the dangers of a busy schedule for top players. In his case, City had tried to ease him into this season, but as it became clear Guardiola did not trust Phillips, they have rarely played without him before.
And while City were short of ideas against Arsenal, when Kyle Walker and Ruben Dias each fired four long shots, they were missing De Bruyne’s ability to make something out of nothing. But they were also missing Rodri: a big-game scorer who could set the tone and tempo as well as bursting on to the surface.
City may not have too many big games in the next few months. They hope Rodri will be back by then. Even if he does, he may still be more prone to mistakes and weaknesses, and there is concern that he has moved from the category of unbreakable players to the category of players prone to injury. And the worst case scenario is that he just gets injured. City have wanted him back for a long time Ballon d’Or winnersBut the award underlines the severity of the loss they could face if they are deprived of Rodri for a prolonged period of time.