Yaya has to blow away big guns to banish the misery of last season
ALONGSIDE Patrick Vieira, Yaya Toure is t he best f oreign central midfielder I ’ ve s een in t he Premier League. He was the driving force behind Manchester City’s t wo title triumphs, the man who scored the winning goal in an FA Cup final and a truly monumental player for them.
And at West Brom on Monday night he looked close to his marauding best again, driving f rom midfield and scoring with fantastic precision from just outside the box.
But let’s not be fooled into thinking that one performance against a likely mid-table team means all his problems are behind him.
Last season, Toure also put in performances like that — no central midfielder scored more than his 10 league goals — but in the big matches he was poor. Now he has to show he can play like that for the majority of the season, starting with the big game against Chelsea tomorrow.
Too often against the big teams he did not contribute enough. In fact, none of his goals came against teams in the top six and his only Champions League strike — against CSKA Moscow — was followed by a red card. Contrast that to his crucial goals in other seasons: four in Manchester derbies and others against Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham. Crucially, too, he scored both goals in their final away game of 2011-12 at Newcastle — strikes that kept them in the title race they eventually won.
Last season, he was a pale imitation. So many times he burst forward but didn’t put in the effort going the other way.
Against Burnley, Manuel Pellegrini substituted him with City chasing an equaliser. That would have been unthinkable in previous seasons as he would have been one of the players you would have expected to drive the comeback. Instead, he showed a lack of application. Yes, he’d had a long season with the World Cup and the Africa Cup of Nations but it looked as if he was finding energy to go one way but not the other.
It’s strange that he seems so reluctant to defend when you consider he came from Barcelona as a holding midfielder and was outstanding at centre back in the 2009 Champions League f i nal against Manchester United.
Can you imagine other powerhouse midfielders like Roy Keane or Steven Gerrard going missing defensively in a big game?
He looked like Usain Bolt going forward and a tired marathon runner going back and that can’t be right. City’s hierarchy were clearly unhappy with his performances and would have let him go if they received the right offer or if they were able to lure Paul Pogba from Juventus. So to hear him saying after Monday’s game, ‘I’m not back, I was always there’, makes no sense. He wasn’t when it mattered most.
If he relinquishes all defensive duties to Fernandinho against Chelsea tomorrow, he and his team will likely be punished. Chelsea’s midfielders cover so much ground and Toure will need to help protect the area in front of the back four where Eden Hazard, Willian and Cesc Fabregas will look to cause the most damage.
I bumped into Kolo Toure at Liverpool’s academy during the summer and he had clearly played a part in changing his brother’s attitude. He’d told him to stay at City because he is a legend there and to leave after the poor season he had would taint his legacy.
Kolo was also convinced that he’d have a great season after a summer of rest, physically and mentally. The summer he just had is a stark contrast to the five tournaments in six seasons for the Ivory Coast that preceded it.
Turning things around can be done. Wayne Rooney has had seasons at Manchester United where his form has dipped and then he has come storming back the next; John Terry became part of squad rotation under Rafa Benitez but was one of the players of the year last season under Jose Mourinho. One of the greatest sights in Premier League history has been Toure charging through midfield. He’s been unplayable and made it look like men against boys. No-one has been able to physically stop him.
AND if Toure is on form, he is still a type of player that City have and Chelsea don’t. At his best, he could get in Mourinho’s side as the powerful, marauding midfielder who can score the goals in and around the box that Frank Lampard used to.
Toure is now 32 years old and can still be the box-to-box midfielder he has been in previous years.
In this day and age, 32 is not old. But in the coming years he might want to take the route that Keane and Gerrard did and find a deeper role. They had to re-invent their games so they could conserve more energy but they were still hugely influential. That will depend on whether he has the discipline or will to carry out the job.
After the first weekend there’s no doubt City were the most impressive. Last week on these pages I said I fancied Chelsea for the title but Arsenal to be their closest challengers and I’m not changing my mind after one week!
It will be interesting to see if momentum starts to shift, though, if City win tomorrow, putting them five points ahead of Jose Mourinho’s men after just two games. Likewise, almost no-one expected Arsenal to lose to West Ham.
But if City are to regain their crown they need the Toure of 2012 and 2014. Last season David Silva (12 league goals and seven assists) and Sergio Aguero (26 goals, eight assists) both delivered regularly but Toure and Vincent Kompany fell short of their high standards.
If those four — the spine of City’s team — can perform, City will have a great chance of wrestling back their crown.