Stevan Jovetic is a decent striker but he's no substitute for Sergio Aguero and is Manchester City's weakest link in attack
Stevan Jovetic will never score enough goals to fire City to the title
Striker scored just three goals for City last season
They all came against inferior opposition and not title rivals
Montenegro star moved to the Etihad Stadium for £22m in 2013
Jovetic has never scored more than 14 league goals in any season
By NICK HARRIS FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 26 August 2014
Stevan Jovetic lit up the Etihad Stadium on Monday evening, giving an eye-catching all-round performance for Manchester City that merited his two goals in the 3-1 win over Liverpool and easily deserved his man of the match award.
But if you think the 24-year-old Montenegro striker is now destined to be a leading scorer as City romp to the Premier League title, his career to date suggests you better think again.
Any strike force is only as strong as its weakest link, and there is no doubt Jovetic remains City’s weakest link among the first-team squad’s four strikers: Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Alvaro Negredo being the others.
Weakest link: Stevan Jovetic is a decent player but won't fire Manchester City to the title
Jovetic is evidently a decent ‘weak link.’ He pounced in predatory fashion upon Alberto Moreno’s 41st-minute error to open the scoring last night. Then at the end of a superb second-half move involving 19 passes and an exquisite final exchange with Samir Nasri, he drilled home for 2-0.
But one delicious double, or even a few, spaced out, does not a superstar make. Jovetic scored a Champions League brace against Liverpool for Fiorentina in 2009 and is arguably still yet to have a sustained run of top-level consistency, five years later.
So while City’s manager Manuel Pellegrini was right to describe Jovetic, signed in summer 2013 for £22m, as a ‘very important player’, and to stress ‘we never had any doubt about his quality’, he was also right to qualify his statements, saying: ‘If he’s fit all the year, he will be a very important player for us.’
In two of the past four seasons Jovetic has spent much or all of the season injured. He missed the whole of the 2010-11 campaign for Fiorentina with an injury to the cruciate ligament in his right knee. In his debut year with City last season, he made just three league starts (among 13 appearances) as he was variously sidelined with knocks, illness, calf and shin problems and two separate hamstring lay-offs.
As a prodigious youngster, Jovetic first played league football for Partizan aged 16 in 2006 and scored his first hat-trick at 17. But starting young means Jovetic’s career already has longevity; this is his 10th season as professional footballer and he has never scored more than 14 league goals in any season. He’s scored league goals in double figures in just three seasons, one of those as a teenager with Partizan.
The 14-goal season was with Fiorentina in 2011-12 in a campaign where Jovetic was the leading striker, and main man, but it was a disrupted year of multiple managerial changes and ended with a 15th-place finish in Serie A.
Monday night’s goals were significant, and in a major game. As Pellegrini said: ‘Liverpool are an important team and one that will be fighting for the title.’
But Jovetic’s three Premier League goals last season, his only three before Monday, were less cases of shooting down major rivals as shooting fish in barrels.
Bench boy: Jovetic (right) was familiar in his role as a substitute last season
His first goal came in a 5-1 win at 10-man Tottenham, and was the fourth goal of the five. His second goal was in a 4-1 win against Southampton, the fourth goal. His third goal was in a 4-0 win against Aston Villa, the third goal.
All were scored with Jovetic in the substitute role, and of course it is not his fault that he was not on the pitch earlier in those games. Having said that, in the pecking order of scorers, Jovetic is very much City’s fourth striker in hard numbers.
In all competitions last season, Aguero scored 28 goals in 34 games at a rate of 0.82 per game to make him City’s hottest striker. By the same goals-per-game reckoning (see table below), Dzeko and Negredo were both ahead of Jovetic, as was midfielder Yaya Toure.
Taking only league games into consideration, and using the goals-per-game method so as not to penalise players used infrequently, Jovetic was not only behind Aguero, Toure, Dzeko and Negredo but also David Silva.
Down the list: Jovetic was the bottom of City's strikers in terms of goals per game last season
And if you think it is unfair to compare Jovetic to others over one injury-hit season, how does he fare when you compare him over several years against Aguero, Dzeko and Negredo?
The answer, in pure goal terms, is he comes fourth of four, whether in terms of goals per game or minutes per goal, in the three full seasons (plus this season) since Jovetic’s full missed season in 2010-11. (See table below).
So his relative lack of goals cannot be put down to the fact that he only gets on the pitch for short times. Aguero’s record of one league goal every 113 minutes for three years is stunning; Jovetic’s tally of one every 168 minutes, including last nights two in 80, is fine but not sensational.
Having said all that, Jovetic is not a main striker, he is a support striker, as much creator and provider as converter of chances.
His problem will be how often he gets into the team when the others are all fit, because while he’s a decent player, he’s not a title-sealer, yet.
Propping them up: Jovetic does not come out well when record over the last three seasons are compared
