How about two thirds of a treble winning season?
Is the implication that we won the domestic treble without Kevin therefore we don't need him to succeed? Fine, I'll bite.
In 18/19 season, we had
Aguero, Jesus, Sterling, Sane, Silva, Bernardo, Gundogan and Mahrez as the attacking threats with Kevin mostly in the physio room. Now we can write essays on total football, Juego de Posicion, pausa and other fancy things, but at the end of the day to win a football match, someone has to put the ball in the back of the net.
Now there are instances where a player is so out of this world, like Messi, where an "assist" is not even needed. He can take the ball from 40 yards out and just dribble his way into the goal. But in most other cases, a chance needs to be created for a goal to be scored. Like a proper chance - a low cross from open play, a through ball, a cross from corner - but some kind of an assist is needed. So we need both - goalscorers and playmakers.
Okay now let's look at the goalscorers and playmakers in 18/19 season (league only) -
1. Aguero - 21
2. Sterling - 17
3. Sane - 10
4. Bernardo - 7
5. Mahrez - 7
Total goals by top 5 contributors - 62
Total goals by the team - 95
Now assists -
1. Sterling - 12
2. Sane - 11
3. Bernardo - 8
4. David - 8
5. Aguero - 7
Total assists by top 5 contributors - 45
Total assists by the team - 75
The top 5 contributors is something that I think we have to plan and account for before the season starts. Penalties, OGs, CBs, DMs scoring a banger, etc. account for the rest and can't be planned for, that's where a lot of luck and subjectivity comes into play.
This year we have had the following players -
Jesus, Sterling, Kevin, Foden, Bernardo, Torres, Gundogan and Mahrez. Sane and David left and Aguero has been pretty much injured for the entire year.
So now for 20/21 the current numbers are (with 10 games to go) -
1. Gundogan - 11
2. Sterling - 9
3. Mahrez - 7
4. Foden - 6
5. Jesus - 6
Total goals by top 5 contributors - 39
Total goals by team - 56
Now assists -
1. Kevin - 11
2. Sterling - 6
3. Mahrez - 4
4. Foden - 3
5. Jesus - 3
Total assists by top 5 contributors - 27
Total assists by the team - 39
I don't think we're Chelsea 04/05, so we need to score a little bit more to win. Let's say that we're not as free flowing as 18/19 or 17/18 but still win the title with the following numbers -
Total projected goals by team - 86
Total projected assists by the team - 68
We have to account for 86 goals and 68 assists. We've seen from above that top 5 players contribute to roughly 65-70% of the goals and assists.
So now the big task for you - go ahead and allocate 60 goals and 47 assists to any 5 of these 7 players - Jesus, Sterling, Foden, Bernardo, Torres, Gundogan and Mahrez. Your choice. Again like we saw above, the forwards and the CMs are usually the top 5 contributors with bench attacking players, CBs, DMs, etc. making up the rest of 30% goal contributions.
A simple list will be fine, just be realistic. For example, we're already 28 games through so don't assign 20 goals to Jesus. He's not going to score 14 in 10 games when he has scored 6 in 28. Or say assigning 15 assists to Bernardo when he has never achieved those numbers, not even in his best season at City.
This has bugged me for a while, so I'm really interested to hear your response.
