Do Manchester City have the best strikers in the Premier League?

Sergio Aguero: Part of Manchester City’s fabulous forward-line

New Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini is excited about the club’s new strike force. He was asked whether he thought other clubs in the league would be envious of these riches and he said “Yes, I think so, it’s very strong. We have four very good strikers and that’s what you need if you play in the Premier League and Champions League as a competitive team.”

The new boys Stevan Jovetic and Alvaro Negredo will join Sergio Aguero and Edin Dzeko at the club which now once again has four strikers to utilise, a key aspect of their charge to the 2011/12 Premier League title. So, is this the best striking group in the league?

Well, it probably is. Of course, one of the reasons for that is that not many teams are going to be playing with more than one striker at a time which means they don’t need to stockpile them in quite the same way. Only Chelsea could really get in to the discussion over the best group of forwards with City at the moment. Lukaku, Torres, Schurrle, and Ba are not far off. In fact, in future, it could become just as good if Lukaku develops as expected.

The difference between the two units at the moment is Sergio Aguero. Assuming he can re-find the form that fired City to the title rather than his injury plagued season last time out, he is better than any of the other strikers on the table. At full tilt he is as good as any in the league, including Van Persie and Suarez. By and large, the rest are pretty similar. For the youth of Jovetic, see Schurrle. For the power of Dzeko, see Lukaku and for the intelligence and work of Negredo, see Torres. But it’s Aguero that gives City that extra quality.

The only other club who can boast of four strikers that they could start are Manchester United, but at the moment their group isn’t quite at City’s level. Although van Persie is the best striker in the league, and a fit and in form Wayne Rooney is in the top five, the drop off to Hernandez and Welbeck is much greater than City would suffer if Aguero and his partner were injured.

The big question for City to answer is how they are going to be able to find game time for all these players, but as Pellegrini says, they have two major competitions to try and win, and for that, they will need to keep their forwards fresh. Realistically, Dzeko and Negredo are competing for the same spot as the pivot up front with Aguero and Jovetic in the deeper role with roaming license. Both have the capability to play on the left if needed, although this is a catastrophic waste of Aguero’s talents, it does give them another option.

Last season City’s title defence suffered because of a lack of consistent goal output. They’ve spent over £40m in order to correct that. Now, if one or two of them are struggling for form, they have other quality players to turn to, to carry the load. Unlike last season they won’t need to play Aguero in to the ground and they can use Dzeko as an impact sub, if that is best for the club. Manuel Pellegrini now has the luxury of a deep forward group, which with the headline act of a back to his best Aguero, looks to be the best in the league.