LONDON — Awaiting a corner from the left hand side, Manchester City might just have done what every player in the Premier League has learned from experience is the optimal approach for winning in 2026. Get the ball into the great mass of bodies around the six-yard box and see what happens. For most teams, it is just the shrewdest way to use that possession.
Most teams, though, are not blessed with Rayan Cherki. And so it was that the season of the set piece found a little room for some true No. 10 play of old. Rather than lobbed into the mixer, the ball went short, a give-and-go with Jeremy Doku that allowed Cherki to drive along the edge of the box. Jorrel Hato could lay a glove on his man, but not enough to slow Cherki’s progress. Estevao bought the shimmy as Abdoukodir Khusanov wisely concluded that it was best to give his teammate a clear runway.
Even after that, there was still an awful lot to do. Two blue shirts converged on Cherki but they left the slightest of gaps. The flick of the left boot was so diffident that Malo Gusto did not seem to compute what had happened until the ball was at the feet of Marc Guehi. City’s center back delivered the striker’s finish that the assist deserved.
This game might have ended as a procession, Jeremy Doku adding a third after Cherki had put it on a plate for Nico O’Reilly and Guehi, but it is worth considering how tight this contest was with 45 minutes played. Five shots to five, City were seeing the bulk of the ball without applying overwhelming pressure. Doku’s purposeful drives into the box were a threat, just as the speed of Chelsea’s counters were. As Guardiola told his team at halftime, someone needed to step up. This was a game in need of breaking open.
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In the 2025-26, Premier League that usually means a set piece, a big cross onto a big bonce. And in a fashion, that is what changed this game for City. It’s just that Cherki didn’t have to wait for a dead ball. That has been the story of his season so far. A 22-year-old, in his first season in England, has found himself in a league that might be the most athletic and physical it has been in a generation. It seems uniquely well designed to brutalize even the most talented of young ingenues. And yet there can be no disputing that Cherki trails only Bruno Fernandes as the outstanding creative force of the season.
From open play, there’s a case to be made that he is in a class of his own. All 10 of his Premier League assists have been adjudged by Opta to have come when the ball is live — his second today breaking from a set piece when he dribbled by his first opponent — as opposed to half of Fernandes’ 16. His 0.46 expected assists per 90 leads the Premier League by a margin of well over 33%, and the overwhelming majority of it comes from open play. His 0.41 was a tally bettered only twice in the previous five seasons. Naturally, that was by Kevin De Bruyne.
It feels faintly sacrilegious to suggest that City might have found the heir to one of the greatest playmakers the English game has ever seen. Keep this up, though and someone is going to be hammering 95 theses against the walls of Manchester Cathedral.
“The numbers, incredible,” said Guardiola. “And the quality in the first season in the Premier League is something unique.”
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Having, in Guardiola’s view, spent too much of the first half too close to Gianluigi Donnarumma, he got into the positions where he could best exert himself on this contest.
“Play close to Haaland and the wingers, attacking midfielders, use the talent that Mum and Dad gave you,” was Guardiola’s message to Cherki. “If he starts to do that he will become an extraordinary player because of his mindset and mentality… He has to learn to do what you have to do for 95 minutes.
“Rayan has something special. The second goal, the pass for Marc Guehi, not even myself being outside, could see it. He’s a top, top, top talent.”
One who delivered the moment that the arc of the season bent towards Manchester City? It is too early to say. Even after Arsenal’s loss on Saturday, this team could still win every game left and miss out on goal difference. The bookmakers and prediction models will still tell you that it is the Gunners who should be counted as favorites. Even as they crawl to the finish line, they have a defense that is conceding less than a goal per Premier League game in 2026. Their fixture list after next week’s clash at the Etihad is more favorable too.
What they don’t have, though, is Cherki, the sort of talent who can break a game open with a pass no one else can see. Or if they do, those players have seen the pitch too rarely of late. “Are you watching Arsenal,” came the cry from the away end at Stamford Bridge. Those that were would be entitled to have that sinking feeling.
He might be a newcomer to the Etihad Stadium but Cherki already has that feel of a true City player, one who shrugs the scale of the moment off with utter indifference. “I don’t feel pressure,” he said after ladelling so much of it on Arsenal for their visit next week.
Cherki may not feel pressure but he creates it. At a time where the league seems to have zigged towards athleticism, size and set piece prowess, the most dangerous attacking force in the division might be an undersized, underpowered presser who can conjure something from nothing.
