Pep Guardiola was asked recently whether Manchester City’s injury crisis would lead to the club looking to sign reinforcements in the looming winter transfer window.
“No, because maybe in January we’ll have all of the whole squad fit — except Rodri,” he replied. An understandable response but even if everybody else is back, City will still be missing the type of player who gives them that physical, dynamic presence in the middle of the pitch.
“Maybe I have to reflect on the goals we concede,” Guardiola said in October. “Normally it’s on transitions and set pieces, because without Rodri we lose this power, because he’s another guy who is so strong in this position.”
City have plenty of players who can move the ball well under pressure and help them dominate possession, but the absence of Rodri is nearly always notable because even when everybody is ready to scrap for every ball and press well, they can still be outmanoeuvred at times.
There have been numerous occasions — sometimes enough to affect the result —where City have looked slow and vulnerable in the middle, and the longer that continues to happen, the more likely it is to be something they can only rectify in the transfer window.
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“Rodri is irreplaceable because he has something difficult to find, but not just here (at City), all around the world,” Guardiola explained after the Spaniard was ruled out for the season with a knee injury in September. “If you say, ‘OK Pep, you have money to buy a player like Rodri’. There’s not one in the market. He’s really, really good.”
Rodri suffered a serious knee injury against Arsenal in September (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Rodri, recently announced as the 2024 winner of the Ballon d’Or, an award recognising the world’s best footballer over the previous year, is clearly in a class of his own in all the areas you want from a holding midfielder, and some others on top of that. And City do not really have another player of his type — what you might call a ‘standing’ holding midfielder, one who sticks to his position, controlling the game and basically taking it with him, rather than running off in search of it. And then, without the ball, a commanding physical presence for high balls and duels.
As good as he is, City do not require another Mateo Kovacic. The Croatian is superb under pressure, can move the ball through the lines quickly with either a pass or a dribble and most of the time is decent when it comes to winning the ball back, but even so there is a noticeable difference between him and Rodri. Kovacic will turn the ball over more often — leaving his team open to more counter-attacks.
Their colleague Matheus Nunes ticks more boxes on the physical side of things, having the pace and the wherewithal to track back, but he is not as accomplished as Kovacic in possession, let alone Rodri, and is not the kind of player to sit at the base of midfield and dictate play.
Kovacic and Nunes playing for Chelsea and Wolves in 2023 (Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)
So who is this mythical figure who can do it all? And if he even exists, do City have a chance of luring him to Manchester mid-season?
To that end, we have run a few tests to generate some options, and while metrics alone cannot fully highlight the skill set Rodri possesses, they can help us identify a handful of names who might have the capabilities to become that player in City’s demanding system.
While any prospective January arrival at the Etihad Stadium will have to show plenty of defensive steel, they are going to have to tick the in-possession boxes as well, so it makes sense to start there.
Using Skillcorner, we can plot pressures received by a player for every 30 minutes that their team are in possession — to help quantify how often they are involved in risky situations in the build-up — alongside their pass accuracy in such situations.
This highlights just how much of Rodri’s job is done under pressure, and anybody in that top-right cluster — displaying a high pass completion percentage in combination with how often they are being pressed — could broadly be considered the type of player who would fit in any City side, style-wise at least.
Kovacic is in that cluster, as is former City academy youngster Aleix Garcia (now at German champions Bayer Leverkusen) and Maximo Perrone, who is on loan at Italy’s Como from… City. Perrone is a good example of how there is more to it than ‘simply’ being very good at playing under pressure — the City coaches believe he can be a top player, but at present the 21-year-old is not considered physical enough for the Premier League, let alone as a possible emergency Rodri replacement.
Using this data and a bit of the old-fashioned eye-test to identify those who play in the right area of the pitch and/or have the right sort of physical presence, we can take a closer look at several players.
Exequiel Palacios, Leverkusen’s Argentinian midfielder, holds onto the ball extremely well under pressure, and although he doesn’t tend to play as expansively as Rodri — his average pass distance of 13.6m was the lowest of any central midfielder in the Bundesliga last season — he is one of the best in Europe at progressing the ball with short, line-breaking passes and dribbling through traffic (though he does also get fouled a lot).
Palacios in action for Leverkusen in the 2024 Europa League final (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Here you can see the 26-year-old’s most common progressive passes last season, which shows that he can pop up all across the pitch — particularly in both half-spaces and deeper inside his own half to push the ball through the lines.
That may ring some alarm bells; it is tempting to want a player forged at the back of midfield to be the perfect Rodri alternative, rather than another talented all-rounder like Kovacic, and that may well prove to be the case, but when looking to provide competition for the Spaniard in recent years, City have looked at players who can play both in a deeper role and further forward, knowing that when Rodri is fit he will play, and the other guy should still be able to find a space in midfield further up. That was the logic behind the unsuccessful pursuit of West Ham’s Declan Rice in 2023.
City surely need to overhaul the attacking areas of midfield soon, with Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne turning 35 and 34 respectively next year, meaning there will be long-term spots open in their midfield for anybody arriving in January.
When Palacios plays deeper for Leverkusen, it is generally alongside Granit Xhaka, which again is probably not ideal as a Rodri replacement, but City have long felt that their best bet without him is a double-pivot and, if that is still the case, then somebody with Palacios’ bite, alongside Kovacic, could be worth looking at.
Only five Bundesliga midfielders attempted more than his 8.3 true tackles per 1,000 opposition touches last season — that is a combination of tackles won, tackles lost and fouls committed while attempting a tackle, which is used to measure how often a player looks to “stick a foot in”.
On the ball, Palacios is always very involved in Leverkusen’s possession-heavy approach — only Xhaka, Toni Kroos of Real Madrid and Rodri averaged more than his 92.0 passes per game last season — and he also ranks very highly without the ball, second for defensive recoveries per game (7.9) in the Bundesliga. He may not be the archetypal Rodri replacement but he appears to be a player who can help teams push on and set up in the attacking third without letting accuracy with the ball and intensity without it drop, which is City all over.
Another interesting option from the Bundesliga is Angelo Stiller, a 23-year-old who appears to be a similar player, only a little less aggressive defensively and more prepared to go long with his passing, as well as being a bit more adventurous with his passes into dangerous areas.
His Stuttgart side were not quite as dominant in possession as Leverkusen last season but Stiller stands out for his involvement in their passing moves; only five midfielders, one of those being Rodri, completed a higher proportion of their team’s passes (13.8 per cent), showing he doesn’t shy away from midfield responsibility.
Stiller does not shy away from midfield responsibility (Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images)
Stiller’s match dashboard from his most recent game, against Eintracht Frankfurt, shows his expansive passing range from deep — moving the ball out wide and into the box, heavily involved in both build-up and attacking moves. Like Palacios, he currently plays in a double pivot, alongside Atakan Karazor, but his high-volume, accurate possession play at such a young age certainly makes him one to keep an eye on.
While Stiller is not as aggressive as Palacios, he can sometimes rush into the counter-press and get easily bypassed. He could be well-suited to City, although perhaps not as a Rodri-type player. While he is 6ft (183cm) tall, he’s not especially physical in approach.
The way he wins the ball back is similar to another player who is being linked with City at the moment but who does not feature heavily on the ‘under-pressure passers’ chart: Martin Zubimendi.
His numbers rarely jump off the page, largely because he’s a player who sits deep and attempts fewer, if more difficult, passes through the congested midfield area. Zubimendi, though, does seem like an obvious candidate to replace Rodri, not least because he literally did that for Spain back in July when the City man had to go off injured at half-time in the European Championship final against England.
Zubimendi is similar to Stiller in that he is not an especially aggressive tackler, but he gets a lot of his recoveries and interceptions from reading danger and cutting out passing lanes (and he is an inch shorter, although more muscular). His 5.2 true tackles per 1,000 opposition touches put him just 11th among Real Sociedad players alone last season, pointing to a more passive approach to the defensive side of the game.
Rodri has excelled in the final third over the past 18 months, a regular stream of goals being one of the things that has made him the best in the world, and meaning he is involved in nearly everything City do.
Zubimendi might not take many shots or create many chances directly, but he is normally involved earlier in moves, one of the best at receiving a pass, evading pressure with a drop of the shoulder and bringing the ball forward. Per The Athletic’s definition, he was 10th last season in La Liga for progressive passes, defined as those that move the ball at least 25 per cent closer to the opposition’s goal.
We can see his role clearly from La Real’s passing network from the 3-0 home win against Valencia in September, sitting at the base of midfield, picking up the ball from his defenders and feeding it to more advanced players. That mix of positional discipline, unerring confidence on the ball and a varied passing range makes him a reliable anchor to the midfield.
Zubimendi, 25, rejected a move to Liverpool over the summer in favour of staying in hometown San Sebastian with his boyhood club, so convincing him to make a move just six months later might be difficult, although it would be fitting for outgoing City director of football Txiki Begiristain to trigger one final release clause before he signs off.
That brings us to our final option, a player City were interested in during the summer but considered too expensive: Newcastle United’s Bruno Guimaraes.
City had previous interest in Guimaraes (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
The Skillcorner graph tells us the 26-year-old is slightly less secure in possession but is very used to playing under pressure. He has been fouled 153 times since the start of last season — that’s 57 more than any other Premier League player — and is very good at dribbling his way out of trouble.
He has also made the most recoveries of any Premier League midfielder since the start of last season and is seventh for tackles and ninth for interceptions in that time, and he is another midfielder who is responsible for so much of his team’s in-possession work. His most common pass receivers are below, showing how important he is at knitting things together for Eddie Howe.
Ironically, one thing we may have identified here is exactly why it is so difficult to find another Rodri: he is involved in everything, thrives under pressure, scores goals and is strong, fast and clever enough to break down opposition attacks.
But all of these players, on paper at least, would look at home in a City shirt and would help to smooth over Rodri’s absence in the second half of this season.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
