There are times when a football field can look very small and you start to wonder whether, in this age of hyper-fit, hyper-organized athletes, the playing field should be expanded, or whether one or two players per side should be removed. And there are other times when the pitch looks enormous, a gigantic patchwork of Rodri-shaped holes.

There is a danger when Rodri’s absence is so pressing, when everyone is so aware of Rodri’s absence, that it feels as if every pass in the final third would have been dropped by Rodri.

At times it seemed as if he was a huge blanket of fire, suppressing attacks from the opponents on both sides of the pitch at the same time, but in fact he was not omnipresent. And yet it is also true that, had Rodri been there, Newcastle probably wouldn’t have equalized in the way they did.

The second half had been a mess; there was a 30 second period where the ball was somehow hacked into the air, and that wouldn’t have been out of place 30 to 40 years ago. And then, without warning, a hole opened up, the ball was slipped through by Joelinton and Anthony Gordon ran on to smash the ball wide of Ederson and tumble over him. It’s just not the kind of goal City gets.

Kyle Walker mysteriously found himself five yards behind the City line, playing Gordon onside, but just as telling was the space for Manuel Akanji, exactly the kind of area Rodri usually patrols, attacking as much by his presence as by suppresses more direct interventions. .

A draw against Newcastle is definitely not a bad result for City. But it is not a victory and that not only gives hope to other teams at the top of the table, but extends one of the Premier League’s most remarkable statistics: since the first week of October 2022, when City defeated Manchester United 6 wins defeated. -3, that is, two years by the next time City play in the league, Luton will be the only side they have beaten in a league match without Rodri in the team.

Since the beginning of February 2023 – that is to say eighteen months ago – there have only been two ways to beat Manchester City: either Rodri was absent or you had Scott McTominay on your side. It would be absurd to suggest that City are dependent on one player, an idea that completely contradicts Guardiola’s obsession with team cohesion, but equally Rodri, by his death and perhaps even more so by his positioning, was often the creator of that coherence.

He is not directly replaceable; no player of his level could ever be that. As Guardiola noted this week, when players are highly sought after for the Ballon d’Or, it is usually because they offer something extremely unusual, something that others cannot easily replicate. All City can do is try to recreate some of his impact through an amalgam of other players.

In that respect, the decision to bring back Ilkay Gündogan from Barcelona a week before the transfer window closed seems extremely prescient, even if, for now at least, Gündogan looks considerably less sharp than when he left; It could be that some adjustment is needed, but it could also be that he’s just 33. But whatever problems City have for Rodri, they would have been much worse without the Germany international. There is apparently no prospect of Kalvin Phillips returning from his loan at Ipswich.

On Saturday, Gundogan operated on the left as the most forward of the three central midfielders, with Mateo Kovacic in the Rodri role in the starting line-up and Rico Lewis balancing on the right. All three finished with a completion rate of over 90%, but not as high as the 93.4% Rodri had averaged this season.

But it’s not just about holding the ball, or tackling, intercepting or creating chances. Rodri is a master at influencing games in ways that the stats struggle to pick up on, just by being in the right place and shaping the game around him through presence alone.

About five minutes after the equalizer, City were remarkably ragged. There was a moment, very briefly, when Newcastle threatened to overwhelm them. The arrival of Phil Foden for Gundogan, a sharper player higher up the pitch, put an end to that, but the thinking was that that kind of shapelessness simply can’t happen when Rodri is around, any more than sloppiness can happen under supervision of Mary Poppins.

Football is essentially a chaotic game. Guardiola’s big project is to get it under control, and with the possible exception of Sergio Busquets, no one has put it in order in the same way as Rodri.

The chances that the issue of his absence will go away anytime soon are slim.