3 Players Manchester City should sell this summer – a statistical analysis
It was a season of disappointment for Manchester City as their neighbours Manchester United regained the Premier League title without any real challenge. To compound their misery, they lost in the FA Cup final to relegated Wigan Athletic and failed to win a single game in the Champions’ League group stages. This meant that the charismatic Roberto Mancini was sacked with two games to go in the season. With Manuel Pellegrini taking over oil-rich club let’s have a look at which players the new man should look to sell.
Aleksandar Kolarov
It is hard to see what Kolarov brings to City’s system other than his fantastic set-pieces. His positional sense when defending can be quite dreadful at times and this trait has gone some way to seeing him ranked as their worst defender this season. Only Edin Dzeko and James Milner had a worse passing accuracy than Kolarov’s 78% too. The Serb did win 55% of his duels including 85% of his tackles as he played the role of back up to first-choice left-back Gael Clichy. Kolarov proved to be clumsy in the tackle, committing 19 fouls in just 21 appearances. If it was not for his set-piece expertise he would bring little to City and it is probably best if they move the Serb on and bring in fresh blood to challenge Clichy for the left-back birth next season.
Scott Sinclair
Before he was sacked, Mancini held his hands up and said that he made a mistake in signing Sinclair as he just hasn’t been given enough opportunities. Understatement of the century. The man who was signed from Swansea last summer made just two starts in the league season and appeared 11 times in total. He also only attempted four shots with just one being on target. His woeful passing accuracy of 79% compounded his misery with just 36% of those completed going forward. Sinclair has seemed nervous when he has put on the light blue shirt, some might say he has been out of his depth. The stats prove that he was not given enough chances but at the same time it is hard to say anything else positive about his season as he just did not grasp any sort of opportunity that came his way. Mancini must be held responsible for poor signings last summer which saw any chance of pushing on from last season’s success disappear and Sinclair was probably the worst signing of the lot. Pellegrini should look to sell Sinclair and bring his nightmare time at the Etihad to a close as soon as possible.
Edin Dzeko
Pellegrini should also look to sell Dzeko and bring in Edinson Cavani from Napoli. The Bosnian hit-man has played just nine full matches in a City shirt this season but was still their top goal-scorer. If he was given regular first team football at another club such as Borussia Dortmund, he would be a 20 goal-a-season striker. His passing accuracy was the worst at the club at just 69% and his duel success was just 47% which includes winning just 46% of his headed duels, which for a man who is 6ft3 just is not good enough when you compare it to other target strikers in the Premier League. For instance Christian Benteke of Aston Villa won 268 headed duels and Andy Carroll of West Ham won 65% of his headed duels. A move would be best for both parties as Dzeko would easily get regular football elsewhere and City would be able to bring in a better striker like Cavani.
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