Kun You Believe It?

One of the longest running transfer sagas of the last few years is finally over.  Sergio "Kun" Aguero is officially a Manchester City player as of today.  How does "son-in-law-of-Maradona" fit into the Citeh squad and more importantly your fantasy team? Here's the rundown:


The Player
He is undoubtedly talented.  I've seen him play a number of times for Argentina and once or twice for Atletico Madrid.  And there's no doubt about the talent there.  If I had to give you an idea of how  he plays I'd ask you to think of a marriage between Carlos Tevez and Michael Owen.  Of the two he is closer to Owen - the stature, speed, the sniper-like talent for a spectacular goal, and general positional awareness.  The reason I mention Tevez is that while Aguero isn't the driving force that Carlito is, he has more of that in his game than I ever associated with Owen.  When I think of Tevez I think of him picking up either a run or the ball on the defensive side of midfield and marauding through the attacking zone - very straight ahead, very fast, and lacking in any finesse what-so-ever.  In no way is that last sentence meant to be insulting, it is Tevez's style and it is very effective.  Aguero has a little of that sprinkled in with his more Owen-like characteristics.  Oh, and when I say Owen, I mean the young one who set Liverpool afire, not the recent edition that barely looks a shadow of his previous self.

Playing Time
That's the thing isn't it? We're all assuming that Tevez will now be off to greener (or at least warmer) pastures - we assume it will be Inter.  If that is the case then you have to figure that Kun will be a no doubt about it starter.  I'd assume that the usual attacking group will be either Dzeko or Balotelli leading the line with Aguero and Silva just behind and wide with Toure playing box-to-box and De Jong holding with someone from the Milner/Barry/AJohnson/Kolarov/SWP group fitting into the last spot based on match-ups.

The big question becomes what happens if Citeh are unable to unload their want-away forward - it isn't like there are a ton of clubs that have deep enough pockets to acquire him as well as getting him out of England.  Really, the list is Real (could happen), Barca (extremely unlikely), Inter (most likely), or one of the new big-money clubs like PSG/Malaga (extremely unlikely).  That isn't a big field of contenders given that everyone knows Citeh, while they don't HAVE to sell, are probably about done with Tevez.  Not a great position of leverage for the guys in sky blue.  In any event, we've seen Tevez and Kun play together as recently as a couple of weeks ago in the Copa America but you have to assume that both will split playing time if they're both still around when the season starts.

Fantasy Value
Again, we'll assume that Tevez is gone and Kun is a regular starter.  The guess is that his production will start out the season at about 60% to 75% of Tevez's peak performance as he adjusts to the Premier League.  Over the course of the season, it seems likely he becomes a 15 goal scorer with about 50 SOTs and a couple assists sprinkled in here and there.  Assuming it does take him a little time to adjust, you're looking at the equivalent of Darren Bent.  If he adjusts straight away then you're looking at a duplicate of Tevez at a lower price. The one thing to keep in mind is that he isn't a guy who is going to get you many assists or SCs in the Yahoo format.  He'll have weeks where he gets very little and then he'll have weeks where he cleans up.

As we continue to say, if Tevez ends up staying around, all bets are off...for both of them.  We should know more before the season starts.