No striker with 100 goals or more to his name in the Premier League era has a better goals per minute ratio than Sergio Agüero, whose 157 in the competition have come at an average of one every 108 minutes.
And due to those impressive stats, Pep Guardiola believes that the Argentine is a special player built for important games ahead of their Chelsea match on Sunday.
“The big players need to appear in the big games, in the big moments, and he has done it. Hopefully, he can continue to do it,” Guardiola said.
“In the big games, we need the important players. No Sarri is important, no Pep, no Jurgen or any manager. This game belongs to the players and the important games belong to the special players.
“Sometimes it helps to understand what he has done.
“That goal against Liverpool summed up what he is about. Sometimes the best tennis players on a point to save the break, they make an ace.
“In the big moments, always the big athletes come there, the big finals, the big moments.
“Sometimes some players hide in the scary moments. The other ones step forward and say, ‘I’m the boss, I’m here and I’m going to win the game’.
“Big clubs need these kinds of players. It’s simple,” he added.
“And the big clubs – we need these kind of players. I don’t believe too much in statistics but they sometimes help to understand what he has done.”
Former Liverpool and England defender, Jamie Carragher, was full of praise too.
“Listening to people who have played with him, they talk about him in training basically just making sure he’s ready for the weekend,” Carragher was quoted by The Telegraph. “He’s not someone who is going all guns blazing in training.”
“He’s ice cool. He can park that emotion. He doesn’t get too up. You see some strikers who aren’t as prolific in big games and it looks like they’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to do this’,” Carragher added.