It is the dying days of January and Aymeric Laporte is in Victoria Haydn’s focus.
Manchester City’s senior club photographer is prepping portrait shots for the announcement that the Premier League pacesetters have activated his £57.2m release clause at Athletic Bilbao, making the defender their sixth new recruit of 2017-18.
Txiki Begiristain, City’s director of football, takes his place next to Laporte for the customary signing shot when the process is interrupted by Pep Guardiola.
The manager greets his latest acquisition and their conversation immediately centres on Benjamin Mendy, whom the France centre-back has played with for six years at international level.
“We really miss him,” Guardiola says of Mendy, who is nursing a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.
“We’re without a left-back. We’ve used three different players – Danilo, [Fabian] Delph, [Oleksandr] Zinchenko. They have all been brilliant, but of course, they’re not left-backs.
“We miss him a lot.”
This interaction, which features in Episode 4 of the Amazon Prime docu-series All or Nothing: Manchester City, is instructive.
Guardiola’s side were not so much marching to the league title then, but marmalising opponents on the way there. They were 12 points clear of second-placed Manchester United at this stage, having only been beaten once in the top flight – by Liverpool.
And yet, the Spaniard was still envisioning how much more formidable City would be if Mendy was in the mix.
In the first two games (and victories) of the new campaign against Arsenal and Huddersfield, the reasoning for that has been crystalline.
The left-back has offered five key passes for the eight goals his club have scored. He has also registered as many shots, contributed 16 crosses, and amassed 196 touches.
Beyond the staggering numbers that illustrate Mendy as an extension of City’s attacking juggernaut, he provides Guardiola with tactical flexibility.
Ahead of the 6-1 decimation of Huddersfield, the manager was asked how his side could possibly hope to match or exceed the 100 league points they posted last season.
“I have a feeling, still, we can improve,” he said with conviction, before elaborating that by “inserting Mendy in the group” and “playing in different ways,” City could further their dominance.
That came to pass against David Wagner’s side, who were the only team to keep a clean sheet at the Etihad in the last campaign.
Mendy’s ability to function as an extra attacker empowered Guardiola to go without a winger on the left flank, opting to start both Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus up top.
“Last season Huddersfield played five at the back,” the City boss explained post-match on Sunday. We decided we would play with two strikers. All the players made a good performance.
“We could not attack in this way last year because we did not have Benjamin Mendy, he is so clever to go up and down. When we have him, we are able to attack in that way.”
There are, of course, factors the 24-year-old needs to pay more attention to, chiefly his focus and ignoring instinct to follow positional instruction more often.
But what he has – pace, explosive power, variety in his delivery, intention and vision – is not infused in every full-back.
Mendy is a thoroughbred, which is why he was targeted by pretty much all of Europe’s elite last summer. City had the jump on their rivals long before reaching a £52m agreement with Monaco for the defender, who had decided in February 2017 that Etihad would be his next destination.
He faced Guardiola’s side in the Champions League Round of 16 then and despite progressing against them on away goals, Mendy developed pangs for Pepball.
In the first leg at City, which ended 5-3 to the hosts, he was in anti-doping control with Kevin De Bruyne and coaxed the Belgium midfielder into a sales pitch.
Mendy was sold that night, but City have made a profit since.
His ability to slot back in so seamlessly and effectively after such a serious setback has been incredible.
Those with designs on unseating City will have watched their opening fixtures and fixated on the “new dimensions” – to lift Guardiola’s description – the left-back gives them.
The Frenchman, given his effervescent nature and excellence in the art of social media, is too often seen as just the joker.
But Mendy meshes his light-hearted outlook off the pitch with ice-cold brilliance on it, which actually makes him Guardiola’s ace as City attempt to up the ante.
