Nothing appears to have changed since last year. Neither the media’s determination on drilling into our heads that both Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll have been epic failures, nor them doing anything remarkable since their transfer as winter recruits for the 2010/11 season. However, the media circus has failed to notice the failure of City’s summer signing of 2011/12, Samir Nasri.Confession: Without watching most of the City games and accusing the former Arsenal man of tardiness is like the judge summoning a blind man as witness to a murder.
Well, somebody has to be ‘Rorschach’ and collect evidence against Dr. Manhattan. You can be the jury and decide whether he is guilty of promising more — and delivering less — or not guilty, for it was not his mistake that City had overvalued a player like they always had.
Samir Nasri has made an impressive debut with City against his previous club rivals, Tottenham Hotspur. He has made three assists in the match to complete a 5-1 rout of the London club. His Arsenal replacement Gervinho made a disastrous start to his career in England by getting a straight red for his alleged slap at Joey Barton in his first league game.
Nasri’s next game was against Wigan Athletic. He came off the bench on the hour mark and made an immediate impact on the game by assisting Aguero with his hat-trick.
Gervinho’s next game was against Blackburn Rovers, where his first goal for the London club turned out to be for a losing cause.
Despite the contrasting starts to their club careers both of them held on to their places in their respective starting XIs.
If we compare the two players’ performances in the Premier League, we have only one player distinctly doing a better job for half the price than the other.
Nasri has scored two goals in 15 premier league games and assisted in seven other goals – overtaking his previous record of six in an entire season for Arsenal. Gervinho has played two games more than Nasri has and scored four goals in the premier league and has made five assists.
In the 950 minutes that Nasri has played for the blue club from Manchester, he was substituted eight times in the league and did not come off the bench in three other games. Gervinho played close to 1,208 minutes for Arsenal in the league, and he was substituted 11 times.
However, the difference was that Gervinho was taken off while the team was in a winning position in 10 out of those 11 times he was substituted, whereas Nasri was substituted for his poor performances on the pitch.
A closer look at Nasri’s 21 shots in 15 games shows that he has been playing good football when the team was winning and he has been poor when the team was losing or drawing a game.
Gervinho will be representing Ivory Coast in the African Cup of Nations starting from January 21st. His side will be playing Sudan on 22nd. If his side manages to reach at least the quarterfinals, like they did in the previous edition, Gervinho is set to miss five league games – including the home game against Manchester United. If the ‘Les Éléphants’ go undefeated till the Finals on February 12th, then it will force Arsene Wenger to use Arshavin against AC Milan on 15th February.
Before Nasri arrived at City, Mancini had been effectively deploying a 4-3-3 formation. He tweaked it to 4-2-3-1 to accommodate Nasri into the side. Mancini’s natural choice for a left winger was James Milner, who — like Nasri — raised a few eyebrows with a big money transfer from Aston Villa. Considering that the English player has almost the same number of assists and goals as Nasri has from his limited time on the pitch, Manchester City would not miss Nasri as much as Arsenal would miss Gervinho.
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