Rio Ferdinand: Manchester City are weaker than last year

The new season hasn’t even started yet and Manchester City are already celebrating winning another trophy. On Wednesday, they won the European Super Cup against Sevilla on penalties. Rio Ferdinand did not refrain from commenting on the strength of the current Citizens team.

They played their first competitive game against Arsenal in the Community Shield. The result? A loss on penalties. They got the equaliser in the second half. But at the weekend they beat Burnley 3-0. The game against Burnley, however, had one big loss for Guardiola. Kevin de Bruyne had to make a substitution after less than twenty minutes.

The Spanish strategist described his injury as long-term. He may miss his team for several months. A noticeable loss. A loss that showed in the Super Cup. Even without de Bruyne, City have a star-studded squad, but it wasn’t the same.

Erling Haaland was cut off, the centres weren’t finding him. It wasn’t the first time, even in the Community Shield the Norwegian scorer didn’t have his day and didn’t make much contact with the ball. Rio Ferdinand took advantage of the situation and commented.

Such a phrase is quite misleading. Taken out of context, it makes the former Manchester United defender look like a naive expert. However, he followed that sentence by adding. “When you lose goals and assists from Mahrez, Gundogan and now de Bruyne, you have to replace them with someone,” Ferdinand elaborated.

The stats of these three players from last season are great. De Bruyne ruled the assists, racking up 31 and adding 10 goals for the season. Ilkay Gundogan scored important goals late in the season, scoring 11 in total and adding 7 assists. The Algerian, who scored his first goal for Al-Ahli yesterday, supported Haaland in scoring goals and he opened the net 15 times, if we add 13 goal assists, it is an excellent statistic.

Of course, de Bruyne will be available later in the season, but for now Guardiola and teammates have to do without him. So the playmaking will probably have to be spread out by Bernardo and others.

Ferdinand continued: ‘And who are they bringing in to replace those goals? Palmer. Now he has managed to score goals, but he will have to score a lot of goals to replace them.” The young Englishman made his mark in the Community Shield and added a goal in the Super Cup. But this will be his first full season in the first team. So there could be some lapses in form from him.

Against the weaker teams in the Premier League, it might not be that difficult to score goals and set up a lot of scoring opportunities. However, the problem comes against better teams viz. Arsenal and Sevilla, whom the Citizens have already faced. So Guardiola must hope that de Bruyne recovers quickly.

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