It's nothing to do with how good players perceivably are, it's everything to do with what qualities they bring. When City won the league in 2012, they had several players capable of organising the team in key areas: Kompany and Kolo Toure at the back, plus De Jong, Barry and Hargreaves in central midfield. This is where they have gone so wrong this season, as Kompany doesn't seem to have the influence at the back he did even a year ago and none of the other centre backs seem capable of shaking the back line into shape, vice captain Yaya Toure has spent the season whinging about birthday cake or away at the ACoN, and they're lacking someone who can put a stamp on central midfield when they need to gut out a result so badly they had to extend Fat Frank's loan from their MLS feeder club to fill in the gaps.
Impressed with the serious quality of the contributions on this thread. Plenty of food for thought. Thanks, guys. Looks as if short-term solution will be to trust to a bit of good fortune till the summer; middle-term solution will depend on the scope of Levy's checkbook and the quality of the guidance he and Poch get; and long-term solution's conceivably already on our books: viz. Harry might be a good choice in a year or two, but my money's on Bentaleb - I thought he was beginning to shape up for it already (watched him recently tell the others where they should be - he's doing that more and more - and he reads the game very well) ... until the debacle on Sunday. But I think he'll get over that. We'll just have to wait as patiently as we can, I guess, in the meantime.
You can see the will there in Bentaleb at the start of games and when the ball's dead. He's geeing people up, shouting the odds and making noise, despite his inexperience and recent introduction to the side. It shouldn't be his responsibility, though.
Bentaleb as future captain is a huge possibility. He's a passionate lad, has that determined character and is vocal on occasions. More experience and the older he gets he'll develop further leadership qualities. Being a CM is an ideal position as well for a captain in my opinion as he's the centre point of a team, you have your defence and strike force either side of you while also being surrounded by your fellow midfielders, therefore getting instructions/ encouragement across is a quicker process.
The leadership gap is evident, and not unexpected given the age/composition of the squad. Sometimes you get a kid wise/strong beyond his years who can become captain early on, but mainly it comes thru on-pitch life experience (which most of them cannot have) .
I actually think that Bentaleb should be given the arm band now, let him grow into the role ready for next season. The lad has the drive, is vocal and is one of the only ones geeing up the other players. He actually looks like it hurts whenever we concede where as others stand there hands on hips seemingly uninterested.
Steve Perryman became our captain at 20 I think - If Bentaleb is captaincy material I'm not worried about his age.
Good post, Audrey. I don’t blame Pochettino particularly, but the lack of a team leader is certainly one of our problems this year, and may even be the biggest one. The player who seems to be captain material on our team is Kane, IMO. I get the feeling he doesn’t want to put himself forward too much because of his age. But the way he works constantly and intelligently, and the way he seems to know what to do and when, makes me think he’s the one to get the other players organized.
Francesco Totti was captaining Roma when he was 22 and Steven Gerrard was captaining Liverpool at 23 - while Niko Kranjcar was Dinamo Zagreb captain aged 17.
