Aguero, Gabriel Jesus, David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne. So on and so forth. It’s fair to say that Man City are blessed with an immense amount of talent all over the pitch, the subs bench and more. Hell, the tea lady probably makes a blinding brew as well. So, with the stars dotted around all over the gaff, it wasn’t an easy decision to decide who to write on. Then it hit me. Benjamin Mendy. What a bloke. You can tell he has the time of his life when he’s playing football and that’s exactly the way it should be. As the story goes, he’s not half bad at this footballing lark, either.
Before we come on to Mendy, I think great credit should be put in the direction of Guardiola as I’ve still got zero idea what formation City are playing this season. The fluidity of a back three to back four is outrageously good to watch and if we’re honest, nobody is going to beat City to the title this year. What about Mendy? What’s his role? Whippet. Speed-merchant. All-round terror. He bosses the left side of the pitch with an unbelievable amount of authority and on an official basis, he’s already got three assists this season. It should really be five but let’s not have fantasy league politics ruin a good article, eh?
Player Profile
After joining from Monaco for a then-record transfer fee for a defender, Mendy hasn’t had much luck. He did his ligaments in the early part of last season which meant that Mendy was better known for his social media presence rather than his playing ability. This season, however, it has become apparent why Guardiola cherry picked him from Ligue 1. I’d hate to be a right-back with Mendy marauding towards you, what do you even do? Hide? No idea. Anyway, we are going to go back to his Monaco days for an accurate comparison. Here goes nothing!
Comparison
Forever the mysterious man, Mendy hasn’t got a picture on this. Don’t ask me why or how it works because I haven’t got a scooby. I like to picture Mendy hacking the database and taking the picture down because he didn’t like it. Imaginations are a funny thing, though. Getting back to it, you can see above who I’ve opted to compare Mendy to. I should’ve probably done Andy Robertson as well but I could only do Mendy +4 so we will have to make do with what we’ve got.
Remember, Mendy’s stats are before he was nurtured by Senor Pep. Pass completion, naturally, is won by Kyle Walker and by some margin. Mendy sits bottom of this particular table. Nevertheless, he doesn’t finish lower than second on any of the next three stats. Trippier is quite a way ahead in the chances created camp, Mendy sits 0.88 behind him. So, you’d think Trippier’s assist stats would be a fair bit ahead as well, right? Wrong. As you can see, there’s only 0.03 if we talk about assists and the way Mendy is going this season, you’d expect him to wipe the floor with Trippier.
Perhaps the most exciting of all the stats is the number of successful take ons that Mendy completes per ninety minutes. Without trying to repeat myself, I’d imagine this stat will be a lot higher this season. Either way, the 1.62 per ninety minutes is 0.7 higher than second-placed Valencia. Not bad going at all.
Conclusion
Mendy has mesmerised me so far this season and I will be surprised if that stops anytime soon. The only question that needs to be answered is how good can Mendy possibly be? That is the million dollar question boys & girls and it is one that I’m very interested to know the answer to. Time will tell.
If I was a betting man luckily I am, I’d be backing Mendy to make the team of the season.
Until the next time.
