Manchester City Need Rethink as Age Saps Yaya Toure

As Barcelona swept through Manchester City again and again on Wednesday evening, particularly in the 20 minutes up to half-time, two thoughts occurred. Firstly, that you couldn’t really blame City because Barcelona were passing with a pace and a precision that perhaps no side would be able to live with. And secondly, where was Yaya Toure?

When a team reaches that level, there’s not much their opponents can do other than batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to pass. Barca do it better than most, but even they eventually begin to misplace the odd pass, play with slightly less intensity and rejoin the level of the mortals. All a team can do in such circumstances is make things as difficult as possible for their opponents, track runners, close down the space and hope.

It’s a time for effort and diligence, yet according to figures from WhoScored.com, Toure, in the 71 minutes before he was substituted, didn’t make a tackle and managed just one interception. Fernandinho, in his 90 minutes on the pitch, made seven tackles and six interceptions, as well as three clearances.

Now it’s true that in their holding-midfield partnership, Fernandinho is the more defensive. You would expect him to make more tackles and more interceptions. Part of Toure’s role is to drive forward and link the back of midfield to attack. The problem is that he seems to lack either the legs or the appetite to do that any more.

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Probably the "beginning of the end" for Yaya Toure says @trevor8sinclair http://t.co/UQMSd5TKbb pic.twitter.com/PJjHWjrOkz

— BBC Radio 5 live (@bbc5live) March 19, 2015"

It’s not just the Barcelona game in which that’s been an issue this season: In the 2-1 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield, Toure repeatedly let Philippe Coutinho and Adam Lallana drift into spaces behind him.

The decline in his defensive work can be seen over time. In 2010-11, his first season at City, Toure averaged 1.4 tackles and 1.1 interceptions per game. In 2011-12, as City won the league, he reached a peak of 1.7 tackles and 1.2 interceptions per game. The following season, when City generally seemed to lack hunger, leading to the dismissal of Roberto Mancini as manager, it was 1.2 and 0.9.

As City won the league in Manuel Pellegrini’s first season, Toure picked up to 1.5 and 0.7. This season, in the Premier League, it has been 1.1 and 0.5. He’s won the ball back less this season than in any other he has spent at the Etihad Stadium.

Sunday Alamba/Associated Press

That is having a knock-on effect. At least part of the reason for Vincent Kompany’s poor season is that he is being drawn out of the back four to try to fight fires in front of him—fires that Toure would once have dealt with.

It could be argued that it’s to do with his role, except in those early years he was playing alongside Gareth Barry, a far more overtly defensive player than Fernandinho. When the Brazilian was signed, the idea was surely that he and Toure worked as pistons from the back of midfield, one driving forward and the other sitting back, taking it in turns to expend energy, much as Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit had done for Arsenal more than a decade earlier.

There has been a theory put forward recently that Toure hasn’t quite recovered since the Africa Cup of Nations. It is true that his best form for City this season came in November and December, when they won nine out of 11 in the league (Toure missed the two draws), but he didn’t play well in Equatorial Guinea. He scored a brilliant goal in the semi-final, but he was not the inspirational figure he has been in the past for Ivory Coast.

There are those who, remembering the farcical story of the birthday cake, wonder whether Toure’s head was turned by the thought of a move to Paris Saint-Germain in the summer, but perhaps the truth is simply that he is getting old.

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Video: Eamon Dunphy went to town on Man City and especially Yaya Toure http://t.co/DA1pcKGKfa pic.twitter.com/t9nBvIU2Y4

— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) March 19, 2015"

Maybe, at 31, the fire simply doesn’t burn so bright any more and he cannot be the same energetic figure he once was, laying deep and storming forward. Perhaps it just has to be accepted that Toure now has to be played as either a holder or as a more attacking player, but not as both.