If Kevin De Bruyne was a surprise omission for Manchester City, this was an evening when Rúben Neves could illustrate why Pep Guardiola rates him highly enough to be a potential replacement for the near-peerless Fernandinho.
The lead-up to this contest of second-versus-11th featured the Catalan calling Neves excellent while insisting his club would never pay the “£100m” price he has read the 21-year-old will cost.
Neves is a specialist in the one position Guardiola has no natural competition for: defensive midfield, where time ticks loudly for the 33-year-old Fernandinho. Guardiola offered no official word that the club would actually like to sign Neves but a player who is the Champions League’s youngest captain is of interest and has impressed in his first campaign in England’s top tier.
As the game kicked off, Neves’ vital statistics were similar, in some areas, to Fernandinho’s. Each had featured 19 times, playing 1,637 and 1,679 Premier League minutes respectively. Neves had scored once to the Brazilian’s three strikes, made one to his three assists, and both were on 15 chances created. Neves had executed 44 tackles to Fernandinho’s 41. The latter, though, had a tackle success rate of 80.5% to 47.7% and Fernandinho’s pass count was 1,397 to Neves’s 1,059.
The senior man, of course, should have finer numbers as he is a couple of classes above Neves and plays for a better side. To help him in the duel Neves lined up against Fernandinho with a dedicated partner alongside, the 23-year-old Leander Dendoncker, an advantage erased when Willy Boly was sent off on 19 minutes.
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Yet if Guardiola wants his holding player to stymie attacks as well as launch them, then the manner in which Neves was left a spectator when City scored on 10 minutes was hardly the requisite calling card. Neves was still trailing back, outside Wolves’s area, when City applied a classic one-two via a Leroy Sané cross and Gabriel Jesus finish.
Moments later Fernandinho showed the younger man how to destroy. After a Kyle Walker error allowed Diogo Jota to set off down the left, the No 25 raced across and scythed him down, willing to take a booking to ensure the forward and Wolves were halted.
Despite the defensive part of Fernandinho’s job description Guardiola admires his man for his supreme all-round game. This is why Ilkay Gundogan remains a deputy only – he possesses the artistry of the schemer but is less of a natural at the darker midfield arts.
Yet, if Neves wanted to show how he can create, Boly’s sending-off limited the scope to do so. With Wolves a goal and a man down the Portuguese’s night became harder. Now he had to try to squeeze the space that City’s dizzying pass-and-move game opens up, while looking for a moment where the match could be wrested back his team’s way.
The corollary here was that this challenge also handed Neves opportunity to shine: pass the audition of performing in even more trying circumstances and he might influence Guardiola’s thinking when deciding whom to pursue as Fernandinho’s successor.
But when Raheem Sterling was able to turn in yards of space inside the area Neves was one of the visiting men who slumbered. Seconds later he did hassle Jesus enough to distract him but his part in City’s second goal disappointed.
This came from a penalty won by Sterling (converted coolly by Jesus) that was possible after Neves was unable to stop David Silva making the pass into the England man.
From this juncture the night was a relative stroll for Fernandinho – and City – though Neves did keep going for his manager, Nuno Espírito Santo as an own goal gave City their third. There was a flash of quality when setting Adama Traoré free along the right and he continued to snap at the heels of Fernandinho, David and Bernardo Silva: a midfield to rank among the world’s best – even before De Bruyne’s 61st-minute introduction.
Beforehand Guardiola had pointed to how Neves is often one of a holding two for Wolves. How he might perform as the lone man in City’s stellar side remains moot.
Whether he will ever have a chance to do so should become clearer in the future.