A Progress Report for Manchester City's Stevan Jovetic

The legendary American comedy Animal House contains too many classic scenes to mention. For our purposes here, though, let's look back on the Delta brothers' meeting with Dean Wormer with reference to their subpar midterm grades:

"

Dean Vernon Wormer: Here are your grade-point averages. Mr. Kroger: two C's, two D's and an F. That's a 1.2. Congratulations, Kroger. You're at the top of the Delta pledge class. Mr. Dorfman?

Flounder: Hello!

Dean Vernon Wormer: 0.2...Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. Mr. Hoover, president of Delta house? 1.6; four C's and an F. A fine example you set! Daniel Simpson Day... has no grade point average. All courses incomplete.

"

That last bit about Day's lack of a grade-point average due to incomplete coursework leaped into my head when trying to evaluate the fortunes of Stevan Jovetic since his transfer from Fiorentina.

How can you fairly evaluate something that is only sort of there?

It was not supposed to be this way (again) this season for Jovetic. The young, gifted Montenegrin spent most of the 2013/14 season shelved with various leg injuries.

There were flashes of brilliance from Jovetic, to be sure, but even after Alvaro Negredo got hurt and lost his effectiveness in the second half of the season, Jovetic did little to pick up for Negredo's disintegrated production.

This season was going to be different. After Jovetic hit Liverpool for a brace on Aug. 25, the hot take in the press was that Jovetic was finally primed to do big things for City.

"Jovetic is a thoroughly modern striker, a player who can drop deeper to start movements and then finish with precision in the box," wrote Mike Cardillo breathlessly for The Big Lead.

Since Aug. 25, Jovetic has played less than 90 aggregate Premier League minutes—62 against Stoke City, 21 plus stoppage time against Tottenham Hotspur.

Jovetic has also made two Champions League appearances for City, logging less than 20 minutes on aggregate against AS Roma and CSKA Moscow. His most notable Champions League moment this season was the wild shot he deposited into the deep seats at the Etihad in the waning minutes against Roma.

He was injured for most of September, which explains to a degree why Jovetic's form this season is so difficult to assess.

Thus far in Jovetic's City career, though, the form the Sky Blues have consistently seen is Jovetic's bodily form in the physio's room. Certainly Jovetic does not want to keep missing matches with assorted knocks. For right now, anyway, he is healthy and available to play.

Part of Jovetic's issue right now is that, even when he is healthy, he is justifiably buried on City's depth chart behind the incendiary Sergio Aguero and the reliable Edin Dzeko.

Aguero scores a goal almost every time he puts his football boots on these days. But the Argentine is no safe bet to survive a grueling 50-plus-match slate without missing a week here or a month there.

With Negredo long gone, City will be counting on Jovetic to play a great deal more football than he has—even if it is just to keep Aguero and Dzeko from burning out.

At 24, Jovetic still has time to make good on the significant promise he brought with him from Fiorentina after scoring 27 goals in two seasons for the Italian club in Serie A.

Both City and Jovetic would benefit greatly from a return to that form from the young striker.