Whereas Aguero would have demolished the high line Norwich played on Saturday, Bony was the perfect man for the job that needed doing last night. I thought it was interesting that his goal came when he had to react instinctively rather than other attempts when he had a few seconds to think. When you're a bit low on confidence having those few seconds can often spell disaster.
He seemed to run out of gas a little but did a lot of donkey work. Maybe he can now focus on placement rather than blasting the ball. He'll obviously never replace Aguero but we'd be lucky to find a striker of CL quality to sit on the bench as Bony surely will in a few weeks. He cannot play out wide like Nacho, for example, and so, unfortunately for him, his one role will be given over to a better player.I thought he was a touch slow to get his shots off when he had time to think and his miss was poor (although would have been disallowed for offside-wrongly)
However, his overall play was much much better. I'm not sure about ranking him against some of the others as there were some fine performance last night from back to front. In one paper, everyone scored higher than a 7 with the exception of Kolorov who got a 5.
That's the point I was trying to make but it didn't come out quite right. When he doesn't have time to think and just acts instinctively then he's fine. When he does have time to think he either hesitates or hits the ball wrong.I thought he was a touch slow to get his shots off when he had time to think and his miss was poor (although would have been disallowed for offside-wrongly)
I have been a fan but with every passing game his limitations are more and more exposed because he can't do the simple things right?
I think he would get a lot more slack if he actually switched on a bit more and stopped trying to take the leather off the ball.
I keep reading that if we had Aguero and Silva back we'd have won by more, but we wouldn't. Bony played a superb game, utilising his strength excellently well to give us a platform to build from. I doubt Aguero would have done that job, so as a result our entire game plan would have changed, which could have easily benefitted Sevilla more.
I think there's a degree of ignorance about how you change X player for Y and the impact is still the same, it isn't. That's why Pellegrini and Bony deserve so much credit for their performances.