Guardiola admits 'personal regret' as flexible Delph ready to make the most of his final chance

Villa Park has always been fertile ground for developing quietly excellent English footballers. This was particularly true in the 1990s and 2000s, when Aston Villa’s agonising flirtation with success made Birmingham the ideal home for players too talented for mid-table obscurity but, not yet ready for the glare of the spotlight.

Gareth Barry might have graduated from the Brighton & Hove Albion youth academy, but it was Aston Villa that sculpted this unassuming teenager into a Premier League record breaker. Gary Cahill, James Milner, Steven Davis, Marc Albrighton, and Ashley Young were also pretty timid when they first emerged at Villa Park, but all four grew under the tutelage of Villa’s widely acclaimed (and frequently poached) coaching staff to become Premier League title winners. It is no fluke that an ex-Villa teenager played a major role for each of the last six league champions.

This record might yet be extended to seven. Fabian Delph’s beautiful curling effort against Crystal Palace at the Etihad last weekend emphatically drew a line under his torrid two years in Manchester and, just maybe, marked the beginning of a second wind for another of Villa’s humble and under-rated graduates. The 27-year-old has one last chance to become the Manchester City player he always should have been: the commanding, surging box-to-box midfielder who can replace the waning Yaya Toure.

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It wasn’t long ago that such an idea seemed perfectly plausible. Only two summers have passed since Delph suddenly became the media’s new darling – at Wembley Stadium in April 2015 – and you can, in fact, pinpoint the exact tipping point at which public perception shifted.

It was the moment Delph slinked effortlessly inside Dejan Lovren and fired a shot back across his body to put Villa into the FA Cup final, ensuring that the defining image of the day would be those gangly elastic legs slaloming through a throng of yellow shirts. As every fan of a middling club will understand, what followed Delph’s ascension was a cruel emotional conflict; immense pride at the long overdue recognition of a bona fide star – and an accompanying gloom. Delph’s days at the club were numbered.

Two years on and Delph is not so much forgotten as assumed MIA, a series of injuries, totalling 256 days and 52 matches out, leaving him to wander the halls of the Etihad like a ghostly apparition. Unable to claw his way into City hearts during that clumsy and directionless final year of Manuel Pellegrini (he would have been the perfect player to glue those disparate parts together had he not been injured for every single month of the campaign) Delph was already an afterthought when Pep Guardiola arrived in Manchester.

He has been fully fit, or near enough, since January of this year. It’s taken Pep eight months to recognise what he’s sitting on, but after a superb 90 minutes on Tuesday night it looks as though the penny has finally dropped.

Nobody who has followed Delph’s career closely would have been surprised when, asked to play as in inverted left-back during City’s 4-0 win against Shakhtar Donetsk, he performed this complex, uber-Guardiola role with total self-assurance. Pep named him his man-of-the-match and praised Delph for being “intelligent… physical… and never los[ing] the ball,” traits that are self-evidently essential to the Catalan’s philosophy.

It was the perfect way to follow his cameo appearance against Palace three days earlier, and together these 110 minutes should lead to more opportunities in the coming weeks. It is now or never: slink away to join Stoke City on loan in January, or make a splash at City and find his career, both for club and country, suddenly renewed. There is no doubt he has the talent, intelligence, and work ethic to make sure it is the latter.

Delph’s nearest equivalent is probably Naby Keita, the RB Leizig midfield engine renowned for his slaloming flexibility in tight spaces and his knack for piercing through opposition lines single-handedly. They are the quasi-winger attributes necessary for a box-to-box midfielder to excel in the modern game, where spaces are tighter and midfields more compact, while also – as Keita’s alarming price tag suggests – traits that are almost impossible to find.

There is clearly a role for someone like this at City, who often look vulnerable to counter-attacks with poor Fernandinho so clearly overworked in the middle of the park. Delph’s defensive intelligence and covering instincts, mixed with his tireless thirst for snapping through the lines, makes him a perfect halfway-house between Kevin de Bruyne and Fernandinho, a player for matches when the threat of a counter-attack makes David Silva and De Bruyne too risky as a midfield partnership.

Benjamin Mendy’s injury only increases Delph’s chances of selection, especially considering that the deployment of an inverted full-back to counter-balance Kyle Walker could add some resilience at the back, as well as provide Fernandinho with a much-needed sidekick.

Today Delph was recalled to the England squad for the first time under Gareth Southgate to highlight his return to form and favour.

After the Shakhtar game on Tuesday night, Guardiola told reporters Delph had had “an amazing game,” adding that he feels “personal regret” for failing to call on him during the second half of the 2016/17 campaign. It seems the Catalan is finally waking up to Delph’s extraordinary gifts, handing the former Leeds United man one final opportunity to break into the first XI of the Premier League’s title favourites – starting this weekend when City travel to Stamford Bridge. Despite his humble Villa roots, it is an achievable goal. Just ask the Chelsea captain.