How many times can Aguero bail out Pellegrini & Man City?

The Argentine striker drew his side level twice after watching his team-mates fail to cope with the threat posed by a tenacious and skilled West Ham side at Upton Park.

There are only so many times a football club's on-field issues can be poured over and analysed. And, surely, there are only so many times the class of one player can make up for those ills. 

Manchester City fans travelling back home from London, and the thousands watching around the world, will have seen all this before, several times over. As at Watford, Manuel Pellegrini's men failed to convince on the whole but were saved by the instinctive qualities of Sergio Aguero.

Despite his goals this was another away trip, another bland performance, characterised by disorganised midfield play and shambolic defending. Games at Tottenham, Stoke City and Arsenal were all like this. It may come across as a little revisionist, but the Watford win was the same, too, bar those two moments of brilliance by Yaya Toure and Aguero.

City may have been more solid - or very solid in some cases - in goalless draws at Manchester United, Aston Villa and Leicester City, but they certainly lacked spark in attack.

Saturday's draw at West Ham was more of the same for the most part. Manuel Pellegrini may not like to admit it but Kevin De Bruyne certainly does not look himself away from the Etihad Stadium and that was again the case here. David Silva has been out of form since he returned from injury some weeks ago, and while Jesus Navas does bring certain characteristics to City's game, there are many he does not.

This was the attacking trio playing ahead of a two-man midfield in Toure and Fabian Delph that were often overrun. The less said about the defence the better. In truth it does not need to be said.

But lurking, toiling, at the sharp end of it all was Aguero.

The Argentine showed signs that he might be in for another mercurial performance early on when he flicked an impudent lob over Adrian, only to see it come back off the post, and then win and convert a penalty after just eight minutes. Unfortunately for City they were already 1-0 down by that point after Cheikhou Kouyate blitzed through their static midfield and crossed for Enner Valencia, who was in acres of space. This was after 54 seconds.

Delph struck the inside of the post after half time but within a minute City were behind again, this time let down by some dreadful defending all round as Michail Antonio was allowed to throw the ball through the backline to Valencia, who held off the wobbly Nicolas Otamendi to flick the ball home.

And what did Pellegrini do to correct a creaky midfield that left the defence exposed time and again? He brought on Raheem Sterling for Jesus Navas and then, perhaps most perplexingly, Kelechi Iheanacho for Delph, the one man trying to plug some gaps.

Implausibly it led to an equaliser. Iheanacho tried to pick his way through on the edge of the box and the ball broke loose to Aguero, of course, who steadied himself to steer the ball home. Everybody inside Upton Park knew the outcome before the ball had left his boot.

The only surprise was that he didn't grab an unlikely, and undeserved, victory when the ball fell to him in the box in stoppage time. Had Kouyate's header, the last touch of the game, found the net rather than the crossbar, it would have been particularly heartbreaking for Aguero, yet again City's saviour.

You would imagine that if City were not so confident of bringing in Pep Guardiola this summer, something would have been done by now regarding a team that is not delivering as expected. Instead there are few signs that they will do anything but limp on like this whenever they travel outside Manchester.