In Erling Haaland’s absence, there is surely going to come a time when Manchester City’s other attacking players make a big step forward.
Wednesday’s 2-0 home win against relegation-bound Leicester City was certainly comfortable but that owed as much to the visitors’ terrible form as the quality of City’s football.
Pep Guardiola’s first attempt at replacing injured striker Haaland involved pairing Jack Grealish and Omar Marmoush as the central players in what was essentially a front four, with Savinho on the right wing and Jeremy Doku on the left.
There is plenty of dynamism there, a lot of players you would not want to defend against… but not a huge amount of actual end-product.
Both Grealish and Marmoush, the man most widely expected to directly fill Haaland’s boots over the next couple of months, got on the scoresheet, but there was over an hour for them to add to those early goals and, in truth, the game meandered.
Haaland has his faults but if there was one word in the lexicon of football strikers to describe him it would be ‘killer’. It is not a word you would use to describe the contributions of City’s other forwards at the moment, and certainly not during this match.
Doku and Savinho played a key role in the opening goal less than two minutes in — the former winning the ball in midfield and driving towards the box, his slightly overhit pass kept in by the latter and pulled back for Grealish to finish — but frustration with some of their contributions was audible inside the Etihad Stadium.
The most obvious example came after Savinho spurned a good chance to shoot in favour of a dummy, only for him to lose control of the ball.
Some of the young Brazilian’s missed chances during this debut season have provoked City’s coaching staff, including Guardiola, to lament in the sort of way that suggests they have been lamenting the same thing for a while now.
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Doku has been frustrating of late too and while last night was not the most glaring example of his disproportionately good dribbling ability yet disproportionately poor end product, there was more of that than there was cutting edge.
City have two dazzling wingers who can really light up a game in some ways, and given Doku is 22 and Savinho just 20, time is on their side.
Against Leicester, Savinho became the first player to assist eight Premier League goals in a season before the age of 21 since Trent Alexander-Arnold got 12 in 2018-19. Doku really is a fantastic dribbler and somebody who creates danger more indirectly when he carries the ball and lays it off for somebody else, but it cannot be denied that both players have been huge sources of frustration.
There may be a greater variety of runs inside the box by City players now without Haaland — this game suggests as much, with scorer Grealish arriving onto Savinho’s cross in the way a second striker would — and if so, the challenge for the wide men will be to pick their colleagues out with far more regularity than has been the case over recent months.
Grealish and Marmoush became less involved as the game went on, and while it might seem harsh to make the point after a win, City will not have many easier games than this. Leicester have lost 14 out of 15 league matches going back to early December and failed to score in 12 of them, including the past seven in a row.
“They have to do it with Erling five or six weeks out; maybe there are actions that they have to take and do it, you are right,” Guardiola said afterwards when asked about the need to improve.
“Maybe, step by step, they will do it. Unfortunately, Savinho had chances to shoot and it didn’t happen, Nico (Gonzalez) as well, but in general, the control was really good, except one action at the end when Nico lost the ball. We didn’t concede anything and I think we created enough to win by a higher, higher margin.”
At the risk of labouring the point, Phil Foden is the only City player other than Haaland into double figures for goals this season, and he got six of his 10 in a six-game stretch during January and hasn’t scored since. They are going to need more.
Doku has three league goals this season, Savinho just one. There is leeway you can grant to young players and newcomers to the league but, at the same time, City are going to need goals from other sources now Haaland is likely to miss most or all of their remaining Premier League fixtures.
Grealish’s goal here was his first in the Premier League for 474 days, since a game against Crystal Palace in the December of last season. Winter-window signing Marmoush now has five in the league from eight appearances, enough to make him City’s joint third-highest top-flight scorer, along with Josko Gvardiol — who has not found the net since January.
Foden is struggling for form and Kevin De Bruyne, 34 in June, is clearly coming to the end of his top-level career — he has not started any of the past four league games — meaning there are just not enough players in regular scoring form.
Marmoush, then, has the most hope attached to him. The 25-year-old Egypt international also scored the winner at Bournemouth in the FA Cup on Sunday and is the man most widely expected to stand in for Haaland until the end of the domestic season in late May.
He makes the same kind of runs as the Norwegian, something nobody else in the squad does (the below graphics don’t include the Leicester game), but even with his decent goal return so far, it is clear that Marmoush still has to be more decisive, more involved in the play, and more committed in duels and other actions around the box.
All that’s OK, because he is new to the Premier League. He has made a positive start to his City career but like with Doku, Savinho, Grealish and those behind them, he is going to have to do even more.
Perhaps this is the opportunity these players need to flourish: without Haaland, there is nowhere to hide.
(Other contributor: Conor O’Neill)
(Top photo of Savinho: Oliver Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
