One Manchester City player failed to pass Pep Guardiola’s test during last night’s Premier League win over Aston Villa.
After drawing 0-0 against Arsenal on Sunday, the Citizens picked up an impressive 4-1 win over Unai Emery’s side on Wednesday night thanks to goals from Rodri and Phil Foden.
Despite the victory, one figure in the City side, in our opinion, delivered a rather disappointing performance that may not have convinced Guardiola that he should be starting every game from now until the end of the season.
One City player failed to take big chance against Villa
Having been an unused substitute for the first time in the Premier League this season against Arsenal, Julian Alvarez was named in the starting XI and went on to complete the full 90 minutes in last night’s midweek clash.
The 24-year-old has 42 touches of the ball in total throughout the game, fewer than any other City player from the starting XI.
Even though the striker had seven shots at goal, two were blocked, two were off-target and three managed to test the Villa goalkeeper but didn’t result in a goal.
Alvarez, who City paid £14m to sign back in 2022, also missed two big chances to score against the Villans and bag his first league goal since the Manchester club’s 3-1 win over Burnley back in January.
The Manchester Evening News also picked up on the centre-forward’s wayward finishing by describing it as “average” in their player ratings article.
He also failed to accurately complete the two crosses he made as well as losing three of the six duels he was involved in and even got dribbled past on one occasion.
This performance ultimately earned Alvarez an overall match rating of 6.8/10 from SofaScore, making him the lowest-rated City player that started the game.
Taking all of that into account, even though Erling Haaland failed to find the back of the net against the Gunners, we feel that this performance from Alvarez wouldn’t have been enough to guarantee him a regular spot in the starting XI moving forward.