Has Sergio Aguero Reached the Beginning of the End at Manchester City?

October 29, 2016: Ah, those were the days. A time when a few small things in this world still made sense, when Pep Guardiola remained more fabled than fraud to that always-reasonable world of Twitter, when Jose Mourinho was done, when Chelsea were human, when facts still resided on this side of the border marked "alternative," and when Sergio Aguero was still The One. Yeah, about three months ago. 

If ever there was a reminder of the strength of football's refusal to stand still, it is Aguero's rapid swapping of Neo's coat for the puffy sort that adorn the frustrated.

This is football's way. So swiftly does it move that thoughts become redundant in the time it takes for them to become words. In comparison to the rest of our world, the game has become like Miller's planet in Interstellar, where one hour is the equivalent of seven years back on Earth. Even the Premier League, it seems, can teach us about gravitational time dilation. 

Consider Aguero: It was back on October 29 last year that the Manchester City striker seemingly reinforced his position on the throne. After a brief tricky period, two goals at West Bromwich Albion in a 4-0 win kept City at the top of the table and took the Argentinian to 13 goals for the season in just 10 starts.  

"He [Aguero] is the one genuine world-class player I think we have in our Premier League," Alan Shearer said that night on BBC's Match of the Day. 

Shearer, of course, hasn't always been what you'd call an authority in these matters. His early days in punditry featured his assertion that France international Hatem Ben Arfa was a player "no one really knows a great deal about," witnessed him use Aston Villa as an adjective and saw him utilise the words "he stood with his legs" when describing Iker Casillas' save in the 2010 World Cup final. 

But Shearer has improved (it would have been hard not to), and in this instance, it's not like he was saying something others hadn't.

Punditry's golden boys, Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville, had previously said the same. So had Paul Scholes, who, despite delivering his assessment with the excitement of a man condemned to baked beans for a 1,000th consecutive meal, told BT Sport (h/t the Mirror) that Aguero was the Premier League's only player who could get into the teams of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. 

There are plenty who will, or at least will have, agreed with such a statement at some point, probably as recently as October. But the effect of Gargantua is strong in this detached world of the Premier League we peer into. 

On Sunday, as City defeated Swansea City 2-1 at the Etihad Stadium, Aguero was stripped of the black, slimline glasses and forced to don the puffy coat for a second straight league game, taking his place in the comfy racing seats. It was almost as though he was yesterday's man. If Trinity had been around, she'd have been cheating on him with Gabriel Jesus. 

The Brazilian, whose two goals sealed the points for Guardiola's men, looks a remarkable talent. He's strong, fast, imaginative and, most crucially, appears to possess an innate feel of the game around him and where to place himself within it. But there's still something surreal about the Premier League's most lethal striker being displaced by a 19-year-old who's been in the country for all of four weeks.  

"No, no, I don't want to leave," Aguero said when asked about the situation after the game, per the Guardian. "I have to help the team as much as I can in these three months. Afterwards we'll see what the club wants to do with me."

That there seems to be a degree of doubt over what City might want to do with a player whose minutes-per-goal ratio is the best in Premier League history seems to reflect the uncertainty of our times. For Guardiola sceptics—of which this writer isn't one—it will be reflective of complicating the simple. 

The reason for Aguero's presence on the sidelines has nothing to do with goals. When the Argentinian scored twice against Swansea in September, Guardiola didn't so much dampen the forward's party as empty the kegs in the urinal.

"I'm so happy for him, but he knows that I want more, he can play better, he can make other things that are going to help us," the Catalan said, per ESPN FC. "I will try, I will try to help him to develop his abilities as a football player. [I want him] to be involved in our game, in our process, and keep the ball, and help us."

Though Aguero might have been tempted to show his manager the Manchester City record books to demonstrate that both his abilities and the help he's given to the team have been rather significant, he's since chosen to do otherwise. 

"Yes," the striker said on Sunday when asked if he could learn from Jesus. "At the moment I have to watch what he does, to learn, it could be a little bit."  

He then added: "I am how I am." How fitting. 

Though Guardiola said that Aguero remains "one of the most important players in our squad," getting back into the team won't be straightforward. After Jesus' pair of goals on Sunday, the City boss was asked if the Brazilian would keep playing if he keeps scoring. "What do you think? Of course, yeah," he told Sky Sports. 

Even if it is extraordinarily difficult to contain oneself amid the arrival of Jesus, it's not hard to see why Guardiola might think he's found himself a proper disciple. 

In only two Premier League starts, the man signed from Palmeiras has already shown the traits of a Guardiola-style forward. Whereas Aguero is a predator of sharp vertical runs and devastation through efficiency—the sort of player happy in the knowledge he can personally win games while only having two or three flashes—Jesus is all pressing, energy, deft touches and lateral movement. 

Such qualities fit naturally with the approach Guardiola outlined earlier in the season when discussing Aguero's adaptation to the Pep Way™.

"I don't want Sergio running too much without the ball," he said, per the Guardian. "I don't want him running 40 metres without the ball. I try to convince them, what they have to do—four, five, six seconds of effort—he can do that. He can do that."

Guardiola continued: 

"

Always [you use] the word pressure, high-pressing, these kind of things. The real words I like to use with my players are 'to win the ball.' We go there to win the ball. That's where we go to make the pressure. But we prefer to have the ball. We believe that if we have the ball we can create more chances and that is the reason why. When I see one player that doesn't go to the press, what I feel, they don't want to play. They don't want the ball. They prefer the opponent to have the ball and I don't like that.

"

The word here, then, is integration. To City's manager, opting for Jesus in his system is like adding some pine nuts and premium balsamic to a finely crafted salad. Going for Aguero, it seems, is more like dropping a 400-gram rib eye in the bowl.

That's perhaps not the most sophisticated of dishes, sure. But as plenty would happily point out, it's still a rib eye. 

In five-and-a-half seasons at Manchester City, Aguero has tallied 154 goals in just 234 appearances. This season he's gone past Colin Bell, Joe Hayes, Billy Meredith, Francis Lee and Tommy Browell on the club's all-time scoring list, moving into third place.

When it comes to the speed of accumulation, none of them are even close—barely any in league history are. Aguero's rate of scoring blitzes even league greats like Thierry Henry, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Luis Suarez and Robin van Persie. 

Guardiola, though, has really cared for the cult of the individual. At Barcelona, Samuel Eto'o discovered that; Zlatan Ibrahimovic did too. In each case for both club and player, separation worked out just fine. For Aguero and City, it could be the same.    

The Argentinian will have no shortage of suitors if he becomes available. Chelsea could be in need of a potent goalscorer if Diego Costa departs. Real Madrid president Florentino Perez is also said to have had an obsession with the forward that's been running for longer than Forrest Gump's did with Jenny. And there's always Independiente, Aguero's first love, the club he's always vowed to return to. 

For now, all parties insist he's going nowhere. "He will be there next season," his agent told the Guardian. Guardiola has also declared "without him it [success] will not be possible." But we've seen this before: a potent striker who doesn't quite fit the Pep vision, eased to the periphery, replaced by less-heralded names and eventually moved on.  

Precedent isn't necessarily a foundation for prescience, but if we're watching the beginning of the end for Aguero at City, we'd better enjoy it while it lasts. For when he's gone, we'll remember him in Neo's coat, not the puffy one.