Kelechi Iheancho has had a quick rise to fame at Manchester City beginning with his promotion to the first team from the academy back in the 2015/16 season.
He quickly established himself as a fans favorite under the reigns of Pelligrini with scoring the winner at Crystal Palace to sustain City’s five-game winning streak at the time in the Premier League.
From then he scored a further 13 goals in all competitions reflecting his impressive season imposing a threat to defences amongst the league’s best.
The 20-year-old Nigerian has recently fallen to third choice striker under Guardiola with the arrival of Brazilian wonder kid Gabriel Jesus whose flair and intelligence thrills the City faithful who are immensely excited to have him at their disposal.
Kelechi has only had a handful of starts this season and even with a return of six goals Pep still evidently lacks faith in the forward reflected by his lack of appearances during Aguero’s four-game suspension in which Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne, both unnatural strikers, were preferred for the position.
He has recently won Africa’s most promising player to partner his clinical finishing and sharpness within the box.
However there is still a lot to learn for the young forward with his technical ability such as first touch and dribbling needing improvement for him to a become the much more complete attacker.
Not only this, his off the ball intelligence to make logical runs in behind and when to press the opposition’s back line and when not to needs work but the majority of his weaknesses can be learned however it will take time for this progression to occur.
With him having the goal scoring prowess and ability to be scoring at least 15 goals a season if he was provided first team opportunities.
The player with the best goal to minute’s ratio in Premier League history, only the Argentinian ace comes close with a goal every 107.1 minutes in comparison to Kelechi’s goal every 95.7 minutes, would love the chance to be finding the net for a mid-table side.
Week in week football is needed to enhance his growth as a player, and a relegation threatened team might become the answer. He may become an integral part in their survival for the remainder of the campaign returning to City as a more complete forward.
