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The player usage chart is a really simple premise: we take the home minutes played, the away minutes played and the total minutes played for each and every Man City player and create two charts.
This is the first and it only features minutes played in the Premier League:
Player Usage Table
Sortable.
| Home | Away | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toure | 720 | 707 | 1427 |
| Zabaletta | 720 | 559 | 1279 |
| Fernandinho | 720 | 527 | 1247 |
| Aguero | 591 | 535 | 1126 |
| Nasri | 480 | 575 | 1055 |
| Negredo | 508 | 403 | 911 |
| Hart | 360 | 450 | 810 |
| Navas | 474 | 279 | 753 |
| Clichy | 482 | 270 | 752 |
| Kolarov | 252 | 484 | 736 |
| Nastasic | 371 | 360 | 731 |
| Dimichelis | 360 | 360 | 720 |
| Silva | 380 | 270 | 650 |
| Pantillimon | 360 | 270 | 630 |
| Lescott | 405 | 180 | 585 |
| Milner | 201 | 382 | 583 |
| Kompany | 285 | 270 | 555 |
| Garcia | 45 | 436 | 481 |
| Dzeko | 206 | 263 | 469 |
| Richards | 161 | 161 | |
| Rodwell | 92 | 92 | |
| Jovetic | 87 | 87 | |
| Boyata |
Looking at this sortable table a few things stand out:
- Heavy Home Minutes & Low Away Minutes: Clichy, Navas, Lescott.
- Heavy Away Minutes & Low Home Minutes: Kolarov, Garcia (?), Milner.
Player Usage Chart
Blue=GK. Red=Def. Yellow=Midfielder. Light Green=Attacking Mid. Green=Forward.
The size of each bubble indicates how many total minutes each player has played. The black line running diagonally through the chart signifies the home/away split in minutes. South of the line means a player has played heavier home minutes than away minutes. North of the line means heavier away minutes.
I'm struggling to think of valid reasons why Kolarov, Richards and Garcia would have played far more away minutes than they have home minutes this season.
Richards and Garcia could have benefited from 'soft' home minutes, while it seems that Kolarov is trusted to play the tougher games (away) more than Clichy is.
Lescott, Clichy and Navas are playing sheltered minutes at the fortress.
So, if we take all this information and create a lineup from the players who have played the highest average minutes at home and away we can create two (very rough) Man City teams.
The Home Team
Using the highest number of home minutes played we end up with a team like this.
Pretty darn Strong to me.
The Away Team
The tactics away from home are slightly different. With City opting (according to WhoScored.com) for a lone striker in 4 of the 8 games.
The notable differences are:
- Hart in goals (played 5 of the 8 away games)
- Kolarov in for Clichy, which may or may not be a trust thing.
- Garcia has logged heavy center-back and center midfield minutes away from home. Part if the is caused by injury, we hope.
- Milner comes in on the right side for the attacking Navas.