Manchester City dominate Premier League Team of the Week
Pep Guardiola’s side made it five wins from five in the Premier League at the weekend after making mince meat of Bournemouth to run out comfortable 4-0 winners on Saturday.
Kelechi Iheanacho – in to replace the suspended Sergio Aguero – continued his fine form in front of goal after scoring his seventh goal from 11 league starts since the start of the season. The Nigeria international was registered an assist en route to recording a WhoScored.com rating of 8.71 to feature in the Premier League Team of the Week for the first time this season. The 19-year-old has now played a direct hand in five goals in his last three appearances for City.
Aleksandar Kolarov, who has arguably been one of the most impressive players for City during Guardiola’s short time at the club, joins Iheanacho in the team as City’s second representative. One of the most striking changes of Guardiola’s tenure has been the role he demands from his defenders and converting Kolarov into centre-back this season. The Serbia international was still a threat despite playing at the heart of City’s defence and even spent most of the last 20 minutes almost as high as the City forwards.
The 30-year-old tested Artur Boruc with one shot on target, won two aerial duels and completed more tackles than any other teammate at the weekend (6), securing a WhoScored.com rating of 7.97. However, while the City duo excelled their performances weren’t enough to usurp Sterling and Kevin de Bruyne, who both recorded perfect 10 ratings.
Sterling is another to have improved dramatically since Guardiola’s arrival and his fine form continued this weekend. The England international completed the most dribbles in a Premier League game (10) since Jeffrey Schlupp recorded the feat against Swansea in April. Not only that, but Sterling played a direct hand in two goals (one goal, one assist) against the Cherries to finish as the player of the week in the Premier League.
De Bruyne, who was the heartbeat of the City performance and even led Guardiola to talk about comparisons with Lionel Messi, closely ran him for the award. The Belgium international scored a clever free-kick to open the scoring and played a delightful through ball to give Ilkay Gundogan his first goal since moving to City over the summer. In fact, De Bruyne completed the most amount of accurate through balls in a Premier League match (4) since Mesut Ozil did so against the same opposition in December 2015.
Three interceptions and two tackles was important from De Bruyne in the role where Guardiola expects the former Chelsea midfielder to work defensively too.
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