Emerging Joao Cancelo offers stuttering Man City much-needed fresh impetus from deep

Cancelo is quickly becoming one of Guardiola’s most trusted players in an otherwise challenging season

Joao Cancelo on the ball against Newcastle (Manchester City FC via Getty Ima)

The questions about Manchester City’s strange lack of dynamism will not go away but in the rejuvenated figure of Joao Cancelo, they may have found part of the answer.

Cancelo’s performance was the highlight of City’s comfortable if unspectacular 2-0 win over Newcastle on Boxing Day, his best display since establishing himself as one of Pep Guardiola’s first-choice full-backs earlier in the season and arguably his best since arriving from Juventus 18 months ago too.

In a team where the creative burden has too often fallen squarely on the shoulders of one player, Cancelo is offering some Kevin De Bruyne some respite.

Only De Bruyne has played more key passes and more passes into the penalty area than Cancelo among City’s squad, while only De Bruyne and Riyad Mahrez have clocked up more expected assists. Nobody has successfully completed as many crosses as the full-back, either.

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If he can still be accurately described as a full-back, that is. Cancelo played more as a right-sided central midfielder at times, in the inverted full-back role which Guardiola popularised at Bayern Munich, most famously with Phillip Lahm.

With Guardiola closing in on five years as City manager, we may have expected to see more of these inverted full-backs by now but the persistent personnel issues that he has experienced in those positions have prevented that.

The likes of Kyle Walker, Benjamin Mendy and Oleksandr Zinchenko have taken up more of a hybrid role – sometimes playing as traditional full-backs, sometimes inverted and in Walker’s case sometimes filling in at centre-half.

The ease that Cancelo shows in possession combined with the ambition of his passing means that Guardiola may finally have the option of playing a fully inverted full-back.

All this is yet to translate into many actual assists for Cancelo, though that is more down to bad luck and worse finishing. Take the Newcastle game as an example.

Cancelo basically made City’s second, scored by Ferran Torres after his team-mate muscled Miguel Almiron off a loose ball and cut a ferocious, low cross into the six-yard box, but Federico Fernandez’s panicked diversion of the ball into Torres’ path meant no assist was awarded.

Then there was Raheem Sterling’s mis-kick of an almost identical Cancelo cross from the right. Sterling was only four or five yards out from goal but appeared to hit the ball against his standing leg, with Bernardo Silva smacking a follow-up against the post from a tight angle.

And Cancelo is excelling when it comes to the pre-assist - or the assist of the assist, if you like. It was his inch-perfect through ball which allowed Sterling to square to Ilkay Gundogan for City’s first. The same three players combined to open the scoring against West Bromwich Albion too.

“He’s a player with a special quality in the final third,” Guardiola said of Cancelo in his post-match press conference.

“He has courage to play, he wants the ball, he’s not scared. Sometimes I ask him to play in a position he is not used to - to play more inside, and he’s more comfortable outside - but today in the second half especially, close to his friend Bernardo, he was really good.”

It is not long since Cancelo was considered another expensive, defensive dud signing. During the first lockdown, it seemed possible that his stay at the Etihad could last only one season.

During Project Restart though, he began to earn Guardiola’s trust and in turn, more minutes too. “In the beginning when he arrived it was not easy for all of us, for him but for me as well,” Guardiola admitted. “Now he understands a lot of things.

“He is a player with incredible quality. His physicality and regeneration is incredible. He plays and tomorrow he could play, but he always has to be focused. He’s a guy who is sometimes distracted and as a defender this is dangerous but he’s settled really well this season and we are delighted.”

Cancelo would probably have been a victim of Guardiola’s rotation policy for the Newcastle game if not for Walker’s positive Covid-19 test.

But whether at left-back, right-back or tucking into midfield, he has now played 10 of City’s last 11 league games and completed 90 minutes in each of them. He is quickly becoming Guardiola’s most trusted left-back, his second most creative outlet behind De Bruyne and one of the first names on the team sheet.