There was much excitement and anticipation when City splashed out £38m on Argentine forward, Sergio Aguero. It's widely believed that he was brought in to replace the still AWOL Carlos Tevez after several transfer requests and high profile bust ups last season. Some questioned whether Aguero was really 'all that' and the usual statements were made about his stature, the fact he was used to warmer climates and was he really going to be as good as Tevez? From the moment he stepped onto the pitch for the first time against Swansea, I think the majority of the doubters may have changed their minds.
Replacing the injured Nigel De Jong, Aguero burst onto the pitch with a simply outstanding debut, setting up and scoring two goals himself showing great instinct, positioning sense and accuracy.
The assist perhaps showed off his ability more though. Tipping the ball up in the air and away from the oncoming keeper to then flicking it back over his head from the byline into the path of the oncoming David Silva. It was a real display of agility and desire.
There is no doubting that Tevez, when fit, not sulking or playing golf, is one of the best strikers in the world. At 28 he is now (or should be) at the peak of his physical and mental abilities, being young enough to still run around like a 21 year old rookie, and old enough to have gained all the necessary experience to have developed his game fully. However, as good as Carlos can be, I feel that Sergio is already ahead of him in almost all aspects despite being over 4 years his junior.
As far a physical attributes go, Sergio is quicker and more agile while the two are very close in physical strength. However these are just opinion and speculation because unless you sit down with each player and scientifically measure strength, speed etc, you will always get differing views.
I don't want to go into great detail so lets just look at some basic statistics.
TEAMWORK
Carlos is a goal scorer, and is almost single minded in that aspect. There are many times he has foregone the better option of passing to a teammate to have a go himself (even Jo may have bagged a few more had Tevez passed to him, maybe). Despite that, Carlos has provided 18 assists in 91 appearances (1 every 399 minutes and averaged 79 minutes on the pitch per game) for City, which makes the number of times he chose to take the shot on himself even more frustrating.
Sergio currently has 7 assists in 33 appearances (1 every 323 minutes and averaged 68 minutes on the pitch per game) which if the trend continues will provide 22 assists in the same time as Carlos. Now that might not sound like a massive difference but consider those 4 assists could be the difference between 0-4 or 4-12 points (and several combinations between), it's those seemingly insignificant differences that make the difference in challenging for a league title. GOALS
For all the other attributes a forward has and what he brings to the squad, his success and ability are basically measured in how many goals they contribute to the squad over the course of a season. With this in mind, both are top class forwards. Neither are out and out strikers despite sometimes being played in that role (more so with Tevez last season), but they both get (or got) more than their fair share of goals.
Carlos Tevez has scored a rather impressive 52 goals (in all competitions) in his relatively short City career, averaging a goal every 138 minutes of play. He pretty much bore the brunt of goal scoring duties for a while and for all his bad points, he was the go-to-guy when the squad needed a lift.
Carlos has 5 years more experience than Sergio in England, after joining West Ham in 2006, Manchester United in 2007, and then Manchester City in 2009 and has progressively improved in that time culminating in last season's impressive goal scoring tally last season earning him joint honours with Dimitar Berbatov for the Premier League's Golden Boot award. Sergio has been in England and with City around 6 months and is already averaging more goals per game than Tevez. 18 goals in 33 appearances for City and an average of a goal every 125 minutes. Once more, if that form continues then he will have scored 57 goals in the same time Tevez scored 52.
One thing that Aguero is averaging lower than Tevez is minutes per game. Carlos averaged 79 minutes per game before deciding not to get up from the bench. Sergio currently averages only 68 minutes. So not only is he assisting and scoring more per minute he is doing it whilst having less time on the pitch to do it in. DEVELOPMENT
Just to remind you again that this is his first season with City, and he is also over 4 years younger than Carlos with another 5 or so years of improvement before he should reach his peak! That to me is simply staggering.
It's no secret that City have got themselves a world class player here. And after a relatively quiet couple of weeks and several murmurs about the rigours of the Premiership finally getting to the small Argentine, he reminded everyone just how good he really is with a man of the match performance against Fulham.
The talk was of how City's highly paid stars would cope with a proper winter and whether they would shirk their duties and fade away once the temperature dropped. Sergio clearly had other ideas. He skipped about the pitch like an excitable child on a snowy Christmas day (I know we haven't had many of those recently so you'll just have to use your imagination). Rather than freezing to the spot, he was on fire with his drive, determination and athleticism.
Of course their are aspects of his game that have yet to develop fully, and he can sometimes rush his shots when he has a little longer on the ball, and visa-versa. But despite this, he is one of the most complete forwards in the league, if not Europe, and is still only 23.
The Premier League is certainly a classier place with him in it.
Twitter: @MikeWalshmcfc or @mcfcDSLeftFoot.
Facebook: David Silva's Left Foot
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