da bet nacional： Ruben Dias may well be the target of some Manchester City fans’ frustrations after he missed an easy chance to score in the Citizens’ 0-0 draw against Porto on Tuesday night, but he was far from the most wasteful player on the evening.
da roleta： A stalemate at Estadio do Dragao meant that City would finish top of the group, regardless of what happens in their game against Marseille next week but Pep Guardiola’s side had more than enough chances to win the game.
The Portuguese centre-back was perhaps the most guilty, as he somehow turned Raheem Sterling’s flick-on away from the Porto goal when it would have been easier to score.
However, it was arguably left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko who was the most wasteful of the City players on the pitch against the Liga NOS side, as he regularly disappointed with his crosses into the box.
As per SofaScore, the Ukrainian international was accurate with just one of his 11 attempted crosses on the evening, resulting in a terrible success rate of just 9%.
He also lost possession 22 times during the 90 minutes, which was the joint-worst with Phil Foden of any Manchester City player on the pitch.
Had the 23-year-old not been so profligate with his crosses into the box, you feel that the Citizens would have been able to make their domination count.
However, the €50m-rated (£45m) utility man was heavily involved in City’s build-up play during the game, having 135 touches during the game and completing 89/98 of his passes, whilst he was rarely beaten defensively, winning ten of his 11 duels against the Portuguese side.
With both Joao Cancelo and Benjamin Mendy having impressed at left-back so far this season, you wonder whether this disappointing performance from Zinchenko could damage his chances of nailing down a spot in Guardiola’s first-team for the rest of the season.
It was the former Shakhtar Donetsk man’s fourth appearance in the Champions League, but he has made just one substitute appearance in the Premier League, suggesting that he isn’t first-choice, so it will be interesting to see if he keeps his place at left-back in the latter stages of City’s European campaign.
And, in other news… Guardiola can unleash beast by making a tactical tweak