During the close season, Man City Square is going to review each member of the 2015/2016 Manchester City squad and grade them for their year. Next up number 3 – Bacary Sagna
If you’ve been following these Manchester City player season reviews, then you’ll notice a few common threads between them – player had dire to reasonable season (often both), didn’t perform as we all expected this time last year, may very well still be around this time next year because Pep Guardiola can’t fire everybody.
Take Gael Clichy for example, any other year there’s a player in a position due for an upgrade, but wait! We need to take care of that gaping hole next to him we tried, unsuccessfully, to plug Eliaquim Mangala into. Following that, we really should do something about the plethora of midfielders we have who are collectively as useful as a screen door in a submarine. After that, well, I guess we could use another striker alongside Sergio Aguero, right? OK, fine, Clichy’ll have to wait.
The same can basically be said for Bacary Sagna, in many ways. Here’s a relatively inoffensive right back who managed a year of relative consistency and decent play in a season which was marked by trouble having both. He made 45 appearances and played a total of 3358 minutes in the year, which ranks only behind Joe Hart, Sergio Aguero, Jesus Navas and Nicolas Otamendi. That’s not bad going for a 33 year old, certainly a step up from the single digit showings we got from the likes of Fabian Delph and Vincent Kompany.
Sagna, it must be said, is a pretty likable guy. He seems to have a good sense of humour, appears to be quite a popular figure in the dressing room, and wants to play for Manchester City. In fact, in an interview he had the following to say, as reported by Manchester Evening News:
"“I’d like to stay. Now, how it happens, we’ll see. We’ll see what [Guardiola] thinks. He is a great coach, this is exciting.For now, my focus is on City. But, as I said, I take things as they come.”"
Compare and contrast to several players who spent the year looking like they only cared about it ending, exhibit A – Wilfried Bony, and players like Sagna who play for the shirt are far more desirable. Indeed, if nothing else, it was obvious watching Sagna this year that he put a lot of heart into the game. He put a lot of boot in too. Rash challenges weren’t as frequent as with some, but certainly his average of 0.7 fouls and 2.2 successful tackles per game was his highest since 2012.
Sagna didn’t really do much wrong this year. Alright, so, he wasn’t as defensive as Otamendi or even Clichy, but Sagna always was a bit more of an attacking defender and his 3 assists, more than the rest of the defence put together, proves it somewhat. He’s never afraid to put himself forward, even at the behest of a stronger back line, if it would free up some space for the midfield to manoeuvre and create. Certainly sounds like that would fit Pep’s attacking football mind-set, right?
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Well, maybe, but I’m not so sure. Sagna is 33 after all and one thing about Pep is that he is unashamedly ageist. His players are young, fast and tricky. In 3 years at Bayern Munich he had precisely 6 players over the age of 30 in the squad and you’d have to imagine Bacary wouldn’t exactly be high up on his list for the position.
Even so, there’s a few feathers that remain in Sagna’s cap. First, as we discussed, Guardiola has a job ahead of him. Pellegrini rode out the end of the team that Roberto Mancini made and now only a very small core remains. A rebuild is, in many ways, inevitable and Sagna’s reliability may well buy Pep time and money to dedicate to elsewhere. Second of all, Sagna really did have a relatively inoffensive year. Heck, even a good year. His attacking style played favourably and suits what Guardiola intends to bring to the club. Another year of Sagna, assuming it was in line with this one, would neither be undesirable nor unthinkable.
Either which way, Sagna had a pretty good season in my mind and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Whether that’s good enough for Pep to keep him on, I don’t know, but it’s good enough for a 7 out of 10 from us and in City’s back four that’s high praise indeed.