Rico Lewis believes a certain Manchester City player could score 15 Premier League goals if he played as a striker for them.
It is fair to claim that Lewis’ claim about his teammate is a bold one.
Sure, Manchester City create chances for fun and often have for Erling Haaland since he joined the club in 2022.
But quality strikers have a level of instinct and movement to be in the right place at the right time.
A team could create chances for fun but if the number nine in question is not positioned correctly, he will struggle.
Goalscoring is often referred to as an art of rightfully so.
Rico Lewis says City have a defender who could score 15 Premier League goals if he played as a striker
As a result, the likes of Sergio Aguero, Carlos Tevez, Edin Dzeko and now Erling Haaland make goalscoring look easier than it is.
In addition, the top strikers are known to be brilliant finishers.
Often, against the best teams, opposition sides shut up shop, which leaves the striker with one or two chances to kill the game off.
The likes of Aguero, Tevez, Dzeko and Haaland have shown that the skill of doing so comes naturally to them.
However, defenders would be unable to do so as their attributes do not align well with being goalscorers, especially in a division of the Premier League’s quality.
Even if they have a strike on them.
But Rico Lewis was asked by Sky Sports how many goals Nathan Ake would score in the Premier League if he played as a striker for Manchester City.
“For City? He scores a lot, Nath. Let’s do a round number, Nath, don’t do a stupid number.”
“Have you backed yourself?”
When Rico Lewis revealed he wrote 15 on his whiteboard, Nathan Ake, who wrote 10 replied, “What are you doing? 15?”
“You think nowadays I’m a top Premier League striker or what?”
Rico Lewis said, “No but here, you’ll get chances.”
Ake responded, “But this season, I’m saying this season.”
Lewis said, “Yeah but you’re up front.”
When it was revealed that Rico Lewis’ original answer was 20, he said, “If you’re playing every game up front, you’re going to score, headers.”
Ake said, “Erling Haaland this season got 20 goals. You’re saying I’m going to score 20 goals?”
Rico Lewis stated, “But he’s been injured.”
Hard to disagree with Nathan Ake
In our view, it is hard to disagree with Nathan Ake over Rico Lewis’ claim that him scoring 15 Premier League goals for Manchester City as a makeshift striker is a stretch.
It is nice to see Lewis back the £41 million centre-back.
But it takes a striker with real quality to score 15.
For context, even a finisher of Son Heung-min’s ilk has 15 goals this season in a Tottenham Hotspur side that create a lot of goalscoring opportunities.
Unfortunately, whether Rico Lewis is right or wrong about Nathan Ake will never be truly revealed as Pep Guardiola is unlikely to ever even start him as a striker in a friendly.