Manchester City Have Lost a Third of League Games Without Rodri, so Can Title Rivals Capitalise?

After reports emerged suggesting Rodri could miss the rest of the 2024-25 season with an ACL injury, we look at Manchester City’s record without the Spanish midfielder.

When Rodri fell to the ground after an innocuous clash with Arsenal’s Thomas Partey in the 19th minute of Sunday’s 2-2 draw at the Etihad Stadium, it didn’t seem like a moment that could change Manchester City’s season.

However, 24 hours later, reports now suggest Rodri will miss a significant period, and perhaps even the remainder of the 2024-25 season after apparently tearing his anterior cruciate ligament.

There’s no question that Manchester City are weaker without Rodri in the side. Coach Pep Guardiola knows this too, as he used his compatriot more often than any other player in all competitions last season.

Rodri started more matches (50) than any of his teammates in 2023-24, while he also played the most minutes (4,325). He then went on to play at Euro 2024 for Spain, starting six of their seven matches before suffering an injury and being withdrawn at half-time of the final victory against England.

That hamstring injury also kept him out of Man City’s opening three league games of this season, before he returned as a half-time substitute in their 2-1 win over Brentford on Matchday 4.

Having played the full 90 minutes in City’s 0-0 draw with Inter in the UEFA Champions League last week, fans would have hoped Rodri’s injury problems were behind him, but their worst fears have now seemingly come to pass.

Since signing for the club in 2019-20, Rodri has only missed 21 of Manchester City’s 195 Premier League matches. In all competitions, he’s played more games than any other Premier League player in that time (260), while no outfielder has started as many (238). He is also second (20,555) to only Bruno Fernandes (20,727) for minutes played in all competitions by Premier League outfielders at club level since 2019-20. You can add in 50 national team appearances for Spain in that timeframe for good measure.

Only last week did Rodri stress that players might have to take industrial action regarding the number of matches they are expected to play in modern football, suggesting some may choose to go on strike if the situation doesn’t change. His potential season-ending injury against Arsenal a few days later was a cruel reminder of the stresses placed on modern-day footballers.

What might Rodri’s injury mean for Manchester City then? Well, the stats clearly show they are weaker when he is absent.

Since his Premier League debut in August 2019, City have lost a third of their games without Rodri in the side (7 of 21). Three came in the first half of last season, with defeats against Wolves, Arsenal and Aston Villa coming before his return to the side steadied the ship and helped deliver a record fourth consecutive Premier League title.

Overall, their win rate is over 12 percentage points lower when he’s missing compared to when he’s appeared across those seasons, while they are less dominant at both ends of the pitch, averaging a positive goal difference of 1.70 when he plays compared to 1.29 when he doesn’t.

Their average points-per-game figure without Rodri will alarm City fans, too. In averaging 1.90 points per game when he’s missing, City would tally 76 this season if that average were to continue across their remaining 33 games of 2024-25; that would be 15 below their league-winning total last season (91). Of course, that’s a very basic analysis using top-level data, but it would still be enough to worry Guardiola.

Rodri was at the centre of everything Man City did in the Premier League last season. He was the only player to average more than 100 successful passes per game (103), while no one saw as much of the ball as he did, with his 126 touches per 90 minutes 24 more than any of his teammates in the competition. He also led the Premier League rankings for open-play sequence involvements per 90 (2,000+ mins played), with 8.4.

At the time of his substitution yesterday, City were winning 1-0 against Arsenal and arguably in control. Just 43 seconds later, they surrendered their lead after Riccardo Calafiori’s superb equaliser and fell behind just before half-time.

True, City coped just fine without him in their opening three games of this season with routine wins over Chelsea, Ipswich and West Ham, but more difficult challenges await the champions, including a tricky away game at Newcastle United on Saturday.

It was suggested that John Stones’ dramatic late equaliser against Arsenal could be a significant moment in this season’s title race, but perhaps it wasn’t the most significant moment of Sunday’s game after all.

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