In the absence of Erling Haaland’s goals, Nico O’Reilly‘s recent contributions have been vital to Manchester City hitting form as the season enters its final straight.
Just when the pressure has started to ramp up, Manchester City appear, predictably enough, to have found their groove.
Once again, Pep Guardiola’s side are on the rampage. They have lost just one of their last 19 Premier League games, clawing their way back into the title race and still in the hunt to win a domestic treble. They might be behind Arsenal in the table, but they have momentum and, as we’ve seen previously, that can be crucial for this team, who have been here plenty of times before.
Perhaps the most promising aspect of City’s recent form is that they seem to have left behind a problematic overreliance on Erling Haaland’s goals. And one unlikely solution to that issue has popped up in the shape of Nico O’Reilly.
City’s form throughout the autumn and winter was aligned almost perfectly with that of Haaland. He raced to 19 Premier League goals for the season by Christmas, at which point City were only two points off top spot, 17 games in.
His goals then dried up, and in the absence of anyone else to score them, City’s form fell off a cliff. They went on a run of one win in six Premier League games, in which time Haaland’s only goal came from the penalty spot in a 1-1 draw with Brighton. It was in that time that Arsenal opened up what looked like an unassailable lead at the top of the table.
Since then, however, they have managed to save their season despite Haaland still finding goals hard to come by, and O’Reilly has been crucial in that.
The 21-year-old is most often found on the left side of City’s back four on the teamsheet, but he isn’t, in any conventional sense, a left-back. And in recent weeks in particular, he has been a scoring sensation, responsible for many of City’s most important goals.
He came through the City academy playing in attacking midfield, but Guardiola hasn’t utilised traditional full-backs in a long, long time. O’Reilly is a technical, skilled midfielder who also just so happens to be an adept defender and left-footed. He has made the left-back slot his own this season, even though City have more than £150 million of talent in that position in the shape of Rayan Aït-Nouri, Josko Gvardiol and Nathan Aké. Gvardiol has been out with injury since January, but O’Reilly is ensuring that absence is not felt while also putting his own spin on the left-back role.
He constantly gets into attacking positions by playing forward passes and following the move up the pitch towards goal. He provides a significant presence in the box, as he showed with his impressive header to break the deadlock before the floodgates opened in City’s 3-0 win at Chelsea on Sunday.
It wasn’t a dissimilar position to that in which he scored both of City’s goals in the EFL Cup final win over Arsenal last month. That was his second match-winning brace in a matter of weeks, following his double in the 2-1 win over Newcastle on 21 February.
In fact, since the start of February, the only Premier League player to score more non-penalty goals for a Premier League club than O’Reilly (six) is Chelsea’s João Pedro (seven). And on top of his impressive tally, O’Reilly is scoring crucial goals in huge games against some of the best teams around. In a sense, he is doing just the job Haaland is supposed to, now up to nine goals in all competitions for the season. Guardiola has been incredibly impressed with his work.
“I have managed Dani Alves, Philipp Lahm, and João Cancelo,” the City manager said after the win at Chelsea. “They were incredible, top, top players, but what Nico is doing right now, I cannot explain it. He is a full-back, yet he plays with the penalty-box instinct of a £150 million striker.”
O’Reilly’s role can indeed at times look more like that of a centre-forward than a left-back, even if Guardiola hasn’t always asked him to get quite as far forward as he does. “The match against Chelsea was so complicated, they defended so deep, and suddenly he ignores all my tactical instructions, runs into the box like a number nine, and wins us the game,” Guardiola said.
The City manager does ask O’Reilly to do plenty of work in the wide areas during City’s build-up, but the winger on that side of the pitch is tasked with getting around the outside of the opposition. In his 2,134 minutes on the pitch across 28 Premier League appearances this season, O’Reilly has made just 13 overlapping runs – putting him 39th among all Premier League players. When it comes to underlapping runs, on the other hand, only five players have made more than O’Reilly (24).
Looking at the locations of those runs, they tend to be made into dangerous positions in the final third, and many of them are into the penalty area. The dual benefit of this is that O’Reilly is very comfortable on the ball in crowded attacking areas, but even if he doesn’t receive the ball, his presence adds to City’s threat with another towering player – and adept finisher – alongside Haaland to aim crosses towards. The only non-attacker or attacking midfielder who has had more touches in the opposition’s box in the Premier League this season than O’Reilly (76) is Arsenal’s Jurriën Timber (91).
A decent proportion of those touches are because O’Reilly is a set-piece threat, but he is also exceptional on the ball in tight areas. He ranks 12th among Premier League players (2,000+ minutes) this season for pass success rate with passes that end in the final third of the pitch (81.9%).
He is also 19th for pass completion rate under pressure (with an opponent within 4m) among the same group, with 84.8%, but six of the players ahead of him are centre-backs who will have been on the ball in far less challenging positions than O’Reilly. He is excelling in attacking areas in more ways than one.
City’s resolve has been tested this season arguably more than any other. This team has more imperfections than they have had in a few years, but they retain an unrivalled winning mentality and, right now, it appears as though that may be enough to drag them back into the title race.
And a 21-year-old academy product who grew up playing in midfield and is now thriving as the most unorthodox of left-backs, without any experience of actually winning the Premier League, is playing a crucial role in City’s attempts to reel Arsenal in. The sight of him limping down the tunnel at Stamford Bridge with an apparent hamstring injury was concerning, but for now the assumption is Guardiola will continue to enjoy getting the best out of him.
“The media always wants to talk about Haaland and [Rayan] Cherki,” Guardiola said on Sunday. “But when the team is suffering, and we need a miracle, it is a young defender who is carrying us on his back. I am completely in love with him. I am so, so happy. More than you believe.”
Haaland showed with his hat-trick in the FA Cup quarter-final win over Liverpool that he can still hit his best, but, crucially, City’s hopes of catching Arsenal clearly no longer rely as much on their number nine finding his best goalscoring form. That is, unexpectedly, in no insignificant part because of their goalscoring left-back.
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