Pep Guardiola and Manchester City challenging Sergio Aguero's ban shows team is incomplete without the striker

Sergio Aguero will miss three matches due to a ban handed out by the Football Association. The FA found him guilty of violent conduct for elbowing West Ham United defender Winston Reid and even though Manchester City appealed against the decision, the Argentine is set to miss the Manchester derby at the weekend.

The Football Association released a statement saying: “The Manchester City forward was involved in a 76th-minute incident with West Ham United’s Winston Reid on Sunday, which was not seen by the match officials but caught on video.

“The club denied the charge and submitted further that, if it was to be found proven, the standard punishment would be clearly excessive. On finding the charge proven at a hearing today, an independent regulatory commission went on to reject the club’s further claim to decrease the three-match ban.”

The derby, which will be played at Old Trafford on 10 September, is an especially mouthwatering fixture because it’ll be the first time Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho clash heads in the English Premier League. The two managers have quite the rivalry between them, and the Manchester derby is quite a platform to play it out on.

Sergio Aguero: The most important player for Manchester City?

Aguero has been on fire for Manchester City so far this season. In his first four appearances of the 2016/17 season, the Argentine has already bagged himself six goals. He scored three goals to take the match ball home in the Champions League game against Steaua Bucharest before netting three goals in City’s first three games in the Premier League.

Manchester City’s appeal of the FA’s decision highlights the lack of top quality depth available in the squad in the striker’s department. Aguero is arguably the best forward in the Premier League and his unavailability will be a massive blow to his team, who have only Nolito and Kelechi Iheanacho as recognised strikers to fall back upon.

The club will have a lot of games to play with the Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup and Carling Cup all part of their fixture list this year. With so many competitions to participate in, squad depth is essential, and will be a great factor in the team’s performances. Three strikers simply won’t do. Keeping this in mind, it’s truly surprising that Guardiola saw fit to let Wilfried Bony go to Stoke City this season.

The team is stuffed to the brim with quality in defence and midfield, so if someone in that area of the field was to pick up an injury or become unavailable for a game, the vacancy would swiftly be filled up by another player of similar overall ability. However, the same cannot be said of their forwards. It is fair to say that if Aguero is unavailable for a game, the Citizens’ attacking threat takes a substantial hit.

Lack of quality strikers and injuries a concern for City

Nolito has had a decent start to his City career but he cannot replace the quality of Aguero

Sergio Aguero has well-documented issues with regular injuries. The striker has missed a total of 237 days and 44 games through various injuries since his arrival at Manchester City. He hasn’t yet had a single season with the Citizens in which he wasn’t injured for at least a month.

With a history of injuries like that, those in charge at Manchester City should surely have done something to address the lack of quality backup for him by now. Talented teenage Brazilian striker Gabriel Jesus is set to join the club in January, and while that is probably going to be a great signing, it does nothing to ease the club’s issues right now.

Nolito is most certainly an able striker, but he is not on the same level as Sergio Aguero. He has played under Pep Guardiola before at Barcelona, and the pair have a great understanding of each other. However, it is clear that the manager believes Aguero can offer more as a striker, as evidenced by his preference to use the Spaniard as a wide man while Aguero starts as the main man up front.

Nolito’s goal scoring record also reflects that while he is a good forward, he is nowhere near Aguero. A return of 109 goals in 374 club matches is respectable, but those numbers are far from eye-popping. For Spain, the 29-year-old has scored 5 goals in 13 appearances.

By comparison, Sergio Aguero has a total of 266 goals in 501 club matches and 33 goals in 77 appearances for the Argentinian national team. The most productive and prolific spell of the 28-year-old’s career began when he joined Manchester City from Atletico Madrid during the 2011/12 season in a deal worth £38 million. Aguero has hit the back of the net a staggering 142 times in 211 appearances for them. The Argentine is undoubtedly a striker in a league of his own.

Nigerian teenager Kelechi Iheanacho is the other striker available to Pep Guardiola. At the age of just 19 Iheanacho is far from the finished article. He has plenty yet to learn, but the Manchester City youth product has given us occasional glimpses of the talent he possesses.

With 14 goals in 36 appearances, Iheanacho has shown that he knows where the goal is, but it’ll be a while yet before he becomes regular starting line-up material. The youngster has a long way to go and needs to develop his game further before he and Aguero can be considered to be of the same class.

Manchester City may be a little too reliant upon the Argentine up front. Aguero has been the club’s finely honed sharp edge ever since his arrival, and without him, they are a blunt sword - an intricate, expensive and beautiful sword, but one with a dull edge nonetheless. While it’s great that they have a player of his calibre, they should be wary about the lack of quality depth in his position.

Should he pick up an injury, the club risk going through a run of games without the clinical striker that a team of their stature ought to have, and that could be all it takes to derail an entire season.

Guardiola did well to bring Nolito to the Etihad and to secure Gabriel Jesus’ signature for the next transfer window, but one feels that maybe he could’ve done more with the resources made available to him. He may address the issue in the future, but for now, he goes into the next three games with only two strikers available to him.