“Incredible, complete…” – Pep Guardiola reacts to Manchester City midfielder’s achievement

Pep Guardiola waxed lyrical about the incredible Rodri after he surpassed an entire year without being on the losing side for Manchester City.

Rodri, 27, played 52 matches across the last year-long schedule and showed his absolute importance to Pep Guardiola’s side in that time.

Whether it was scoring crucial goals – such as in the Champions League final – or dictating games in the midfield, Manchester City’s Spaniard offered it all.

When he has been absent, subtle cracks have shown within the team, and subsequently, points have been dropped. In fact, out of the seven games that the former Atletico Madrid midfielder has missed in the last year, only two of those have ended in wins for City.

Asked about the importance of the holding midfielder ahead of Manchester City’s clash against Everton on Saturday afternoon, Guardiola could not speak more highly.

“Well, the quality he has,” started the City boss. “The quality, the presence, the composure, the personality, how he reacts when we concede a goal, his body language, a thousand million things.

“He’s an incredible, complete holding midfielder, football player I would say. He’s really important, otherwise he would not play as much minutes as he has played.”

Whilst there is not tremendous cover for the 27-year-old, City are purring elsewhere. Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Halaand are now back, with the Belgian already having provided four assists in the short time he’s been fit.

Meanwhile, Phil Foden is having one of the greatest seasons of his career so far, and City also have an attacking threat from the flanks, particularly with the rise of Oscar Bobb through the academy.

However, despite this, Guardiola looked to play down any of the expectations that his side could replicate their incredible achievements from the previous season.

“Yeah; six-tuple, and seven-tuple, and fifty-tuple… This is a fairytale my friends, it’s more complicated than that,” said Guardiola, when the prospect of another Treble was brought up in his pre-match press conference.

“It’s try to win against Everton and we’ll see what happens. We have, I would say, 99.9% possibility that we are not going to win the Treble, because never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever has done it. The chance to do it again is like this, minimal.”