Target man or winger, strike partner or super sub? Man City ponder what to do with Gabriel Jesus

Pep Guardiola and the target man. It is a brief and inglorious history, not so much a meeting of opposites as a swift parting of them. Few have ever been as scathing about the managerial great as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was sold at a huge loss. The giant striker he inherited at Manchester City, Wilfried Bony, was discarded without playing a game for Guardiola.

Briefly, City reprised a tactic from the past on Saturday. Gabriel Jesus, just 5ft 10in and scarcely a man who grew with memories of Niall Quinn leading the line for City, nevertheless did his best impression of a totemic target man, winning a flick-on against the rather taller Tyrone Mings and Raheem Sterling scuttled away to score. The game changed in one header.

“That was exceptional,” said Guardiola. In an instant, City were unable to play out from the back, the defenders not offering Ederson angles. He went long, looking for the short forwards. “Raheem and Bernardo [Silva] are not basketball players so Gabriel was the strongest in that position,” Guardiola added. “He flicked the ball good. Football is sometimes like this. Sometimes you have to use it.”

If it illustrated the range of Jesus’ talents, it was a rarity in another respect, only the third time since Christmas that he has started a league game at the Etihad. The 3-0 win against Aston Villa was, remarkably, the first occasion in 2019 he began against an English club and did not score. He perhaps provided everything but the goal: an assist, a miss, a shot that required an astonishing goal-line clearance from Mings and a chip that clipped the bar.

Last season, he was an extraordinary outlier, a player who scored 21 goals in a campaign when he only started eight league games. If that speaks to the number of games Treble-winning teams play, and their capacity to rout Burton and Rotherham, it also included a Champions League hat-trick and an FA Cup final brace. He has been City’s deluxe back-up, often Brazil’s first-choice forward but, unlike predecessors such as Ronaldo and Romario, second-choice at club level. Sergio Aguero has won Guardiola over, both for bigger games and encounters at the Etihad.

Part of the rationale is that Aguero is better at finding space in the close confines of a packed penalty area and, as the finest finisher, is likeliest to exploit them. Jesus’ high pressing, which Guardiola often describes as the best in the world, may be particularly effective on the road. It has been one or the other, usually Aguero but rarely both.

“They can play [together],” Guardiola said. “It depends on the opponents and their system.” In part, it is an answer created to bolster Jesus’ morale and it is one that could have been designed with the vast Brazilian audience in mind. Yet it is rendered more possible by the return to fitness of Benjamin Mendy. Guardiola has flirted with 3-5-2 in his reign, pairing Aguero and Jesus in a 5-0 demolition of 10-man Liverpool and a 6-1 thrashing of Huddersfield. It has only been possible when Mendy has been available to be both a one-man left flank and a supplier of enviably accurate low crosses. Now the fit-again Frenchman has started City’s last three games.

There is another way of crowbarring both strikers in. “Gabriel plays sometimes on the left for the national team,” noted Guardiola. “Of course they can play [together]. He is not a specific winger, like Raheem, Bernardo, Leroy [Sane] and Riyad [Mahrez] are but he can play there. He has incredible work ethic and his runs in behind.”

In both positions, however, there is a small but sizeable stumbling block to Jesus starting. He has a Sterling-shaped difficulty. He is not alone. The Englishman demoted Sane to the ranks of the reserves last season. His prolific return on the left reduces the rationale for fielding anyone else there. A winger who outscores most strikers has a stronger case to partner Aguero should City play 3-5-2. A man who is never injured gives his rivals few opportunities. If Aguero represented Jesus’ first problem, Sterling is the second. He will surely retain his place for a Carabao Cup tie against Southampton, but there are twin obstacles in his path when Guardiola selects his team for tougher tests.