Sergio Aguero's place in Manchester City folklore has long been secured

There will be a statue and it is probably not that hard to guess which moment will be immortalised. It is surely the image that Manchester City would forever treasure anyway, of Sergio Aguero wheeling away, bare-chested, whirling his shirt in his right hand after scoring what Pep Guardiola has often described as “the most important goal in the club’s history.” City 3 QPR 2; the title had changed hands at the last. The time – 93.20 – already adorns the outside of the Etihad Stadium. Aguero had scored City’s greatest goal long before he became their greatest goalscorer. He had sealed a place in City legend even before he became, in Kevin de Bruyne’s words, “a City legend for ever.” “The problem is, how can I ever top that…?” Aguero wryly wondered in his autobiography. Perhaps he didn’t, if only because no one has: in the 94th minute of the last Premier League game of the season, making his club champions for the first time in 44 years, at the expense of their neighbours and the division’s resident superpower. But, with four Premier League titles, an FA Cup and five League Cups, he gave it a good try. Aguero is set to leave City his summer as the most decorated player in their history, replacing his former supplier David Silva, and after obliterating their scoring record, which had remained intact since the Second World War curtailed Eric Brook’s career. He will go after a decade at City and, for much of it, he was such a byword for clinically brilliant finishing that his feats could be taken for granted. While Manuel Pellegrini called him the world’s third-best player, the individual honours went to others. Aguero just got the goals. Until the last year, they came at a ridiculous rate: 254 in under nine seasons. He was City’s top scorer in eight consecutive season. For six in succession, he got at least 28 goals, despite regular injuries, and, to put that into context, the last player to do that in English football was Jimmy Greaves. As a quicksilver finisher, finding space and then the corner of the net, Aguero bears certain similarities to the English top flight’s record scorer; Cesar Luis Menotti, Argentina’s 1978 World Cup-winning coach, long compared him to Romario. In other respects, he rubs shoulders with the best of British. Perhaps one of Aguero’s finest achievements is becoming the Premier League’s top-scoring foreigner; consider the competition for that title. His total of top-flight goals, including those in Argentina and Spain, is only five short of Alan Shearer’s eventual haul. He announced his arrival at City in auspicious fashion. His first season in England was bookended by dramatic late contributions. A cameo against Swansea brought two goals in half an hour, the first eight minutes after his introduction. No one has scored so many Premier League goals since his debut. No one can rival his average of one every 108 minutes. Famously bad in training and good on the pitch, he came alive around the box. “Strikers is numbers,” Guardiola said last January. “Strikers is a smell of a goal.” Aguero could sniff out an opening better than anyone. His departure represents a closing. It has been signposted in a season riddled by injury. City have found a way to win without him, their host of false nines compensating for the absence of the specialist predator. With him, however, they possessed a finisher capable of the spectacular – a Manchester derby winner at Old Trafford was reminiscent of George Best, a 2013 strike against Liverpool from an angle that seemed to defy geometry – but with the ruthlessness to carry on scoring. His total of 12 Premier League hat-tricks is unrivalled. His victims included a deluxe cast. There were trebles a week apart against Arsenal and Chelsea, four goals in 42 minutes against a Leicester team who had been champions two years earlier. At one stage, Aguero had scored five of the last 11 hat-tricks in the entire division. Only his close friend Lionel Messi scored more goals for Guardiola, but Aguero even got a hat-trick against him, with Manuel Pellegrini’s City beating the Catalan’s Bayern in 2014. It finished 3-2, Aguero bending events to his will with a cool injury-time winner. It was not his first, or his most famous.

Sergio Aguero's place in Manchester City folklore has long been secured

Prolific striker's title-winning strike in 2012 will remain immortalised as 'the most important goal in the club’s history'