I think you are missing a lot here.
- City is used to having Aguero out. He has been kind of injury prone and it hasn’t hurt their team. City rack up points without Aguero just as much as they rack up points with Aguero. A healthy Aguero makes them a better team, but missing Aguero doesn’t negatively impact them either. Has not having Aguero caused City to be worse in the league, or get knocked out of any cup competition? Nothing really to complain about.
- Aguero being out means Man City can put another 8 figure forward in the line up. There isn’t much of a talent drop off because you are getting another top player in the lineup. They will replace Aguero with a 9 figure forward this offseason. They are one of the only teams whose spending will not have been impacted by the pandemic. They have over 100m of fullbacks alone on the bench today.
- Aguero is just one guy. Not an entire position group.
- City might be better without Aguero? I don’t know if even I agree with this yet but the evidence is pretty interesting.
Now if you look at Liverpool, they’ve never had to play without Virgil since he arrived. They don’t have another 50m player that they can throw in. They don’t have any players that they can throw in because the position group is wiped out. The midfielders covering for the injured CBs are injured. Not is a rarity (if ever) that a team has ever had to deal with injuries at that scale. Liverpool aren’t City.
obviously there are other issues but City losing Aguero has much less of an impact than Liverpool losing Virgil if you wanted to do a one for one comparison.
