Man City reap rewards of Fulham snub as rest of Premier League looks foolish | OneFootball

We are once again asking how Manchester City faced so little competition for Rayan Cherki.

It could have been very different for the French magician, who rejected Fulham after the Cottagers agreed a £16.7million fee with Lyon in the summer of 2024.

Cherki felt a better opportunity would come and, the following summer, he joined Manchester City for £34m.

Pep Guardiola is letting him express himself and, for all the criticism he has received for limiting Jack Grealish’s game among others, he knows when to take the handbrake off with certain players, such as Jeremy Doku and Cherki.

He has outperformed so many more expensive Premier League summer signings, including Wirtz, Ebere Eze and Xavi Simons, and Saturday’s winning goal and go-ahead assist at Nottingham Forest might be his biggest contributions yet.

Cherki is proving to be a true X-factor in Guardiola’s attack and, after registering some huge assists in the Premier League in recent weeks, his 83rd-minute winner at the City Ground was only his second goal in the top flight, and his first since the opening weekend at Wolves.

He did take a while to get going, but that was down to a thigh injury. Ever since coming into the starting XI, he has only got better with every passing week.

His statistics are improving, yet Cherki is a player whose influence goes far beyond goals and assists. It’s the trickery, the positioning, the ability to draw defenders towards him – the little things that don’t get tracked by Opta but are making subtle differences for City.

Those subtle differences, combined with his goal involvements, are having such an impact that City are now top of the Premier League – for a few hours at least – having won their last six games and dropped points in just one of their previous nine. Incidentally, his first start after returning from injury came nine games ago.

After a competitive but rather dull first half between Forest and the Cityzens, the second period began in electric fashion. Within three minutes of the restart, Cherki produced a wonderful reverse pass to find Tijjani Reijnders for the opening goal. It was an outstanding run and a decent finish, but Cherki’s ability to find space between the lines and play a killer pass made it happen.

It felt like City would run away with it, but Reijnders got himself in a tangle on the edge of the Forest box, allowing a swift counter-attack that Omari Hutchinson finished with a fine equaliser.

What followed was a scrap between two teams who both had chances to win it, before Cherki’s fabulous winner seven minutes from time.

Morgan Gibbs-White thought he was fouled by Nico O’Reilly before being nutmegged by Cherki’s powerful and precise strike, teed up perfectly by Josko Gvardiol.

Cherki made the difference once again and is bringing something that City’s closest title rivals Arsenal lack: a genuine X-factor in the final third.

City currently have three of those in Cherki, Erling Haaland and Phil Foden, while Arsenal can boast the clutch goals of Leandro Trossard but very little else. Bukayo Saka remains their only truly world-class attacker but has not been playing at his usual level this season. When Saka is off the boil, Mikel Arteta does not have many get-outs, with set-pieces becoming Arsenal’s biggest weapon when push comes to shove.

The result might have been different had VAR been allowed to intervene and advise Rob Jones to review whether Ruben Dias should have been shown a second yellow card for a foul on Igor Jesus just 30 seconds into the second half.

We honestly have no idea why VAR is not permitted to get involved with potential second yellow cards. It is a potential red card, so why? It is baffling and deeply annoying.

On a day that could have been about Elliot Anderson’s City audition – which went relatively well as he outperformed Nico Gonzalez – or how Forest’s players are fully buying into Dycheball, it instead became all about Cherki and how Guardiola’s side faced almost no competition for his signature last summer, despite his links with numerous Premier League clubs during his time at Lyon.

Our first story about Cherki came back in 2019, when Manchester United were reportedly monitoring him at the age of just 15. Chelsea later came close to signing him, United’s name continued to crop up and Newcastle United were apparently keen too. But he is not English and not called Ryan Cheek, so Eddie Howe was never interested.

Then came the Fulham close call, which would have been quite the coup for Marco Silva had Cherki not taken a risk and believed there were bigger and better things waiting.

He was absolutely right to believe.

Cherki is now City’s biggest difference-maker and most in-form player, helping them leapfrog Arsenal in the Premier League table. The Gunners may yet return to the summit by the end of the day, but City are in the ascendancy, and there is no better player in the Premier League right now than Rayan Cherki.