He got two yellow cards in 31 seconds? Oh no, he didn’t! Oh yes, he did!
It’s pantomime season and high farce gripped the Etihad Stadium towards the end of an elongated and fractious first-half in Manchester City’s scrappy 1-0 win over Wolves.
"The good example is when you look at the game, in every moment Raul is there,” Wolves boss Bruno Lage said before the contest as he lavished praise on his number nine Raul Jimenez.
“He’s a good example for all the kids who want to be top players - not just a top player, but also a top man.”
Being there in every moment really is commendable. Until it extends to blocking a free-kick from a yard away having conceded said set piece to earn a booking.
Top man? Not exactly.
Jimenez’s exit from the field was remarkable for its length and general level of grandstanding.
An attempt to embrace Lage on the touchline was a step too far though, with his manager treating the player he has described as his “perfect striker” with the sort of contempt you might reserve for the perfect idiot.
Jimenez’s petulance was particularly ill-timed, given Lage inserted him into the conversation that is set to accompany any points of stress in City’s Premier League title defence.
“We are talking about one of the best players in the world and he’s playing for us,” poor old Bruno continued, in a eulogy unlikely to be repeated for the foreseeable future.
“Imagine if Pep Guardiola comes with his money. Imagine Raul playing for Man City, I can imagine that.
“He knows that game, he knows how to play inside, he knows how to play in the box, he will run a lot when you are defending, so he has all the profile. I don’t want to give [Guardiola] ideas!”
Guardiola probably had no idea he would see a red card more boneheaded than the one Kyle Walker picked up at RB Leipzig in midweek, but there it was.
Like the benched Walker, Jimenez was condemned to a watching brief for the rest of the afternoon as the latest installment of the Strikerless Manchester City Show played out to an often tetchy live audience.
There have been plenty of times this season where City have dazzled and completely outplayed opponents because they don’t play with an orthodox number nine. This felt like one of those occasions where they won despite lacking a reliable goal-getter.
Mino Raiola again inserted Erling Haaland into the Manchester City conversation this week, but there is a school of thought that City under Txiki Begiristain will adopt their usual policy of avoiding transfer sagas and finding value with their top dollar.
Jimenez might have represented an intriguing alternative before he made a holy show of himself.
Until his red card, he wasn’t even the most irritable number nine on the field, as Gabriel Jesus raged at referee Jon Moss (he was not in a minority on either side) and showed the temperamental flaws that have stopped a very valuable member of Guardiola’s squad becoming a sure thing in the penalty area.
There are still plenty of goals in this City side. Guardiola is one shy of overseeing 500 in the Premier League and Raheem Sterling now has 100 in England’s top flight.
The anxious murmurs before the England striker dispatched his 66th-minute penalty didn’t exactly scream confidence from the Eastland masses, however, and Jack Grealish’s awful miss with the goal at his mercy shortly afterward showed he has adopted an unwelcome facet of the City attack.
It was a horrible game, badly officiated where tempers frayed. In what promises to be a title race fought on a knife-edge, it was a case of a win by any means necessary. City have produced plenty of champagne and caviar stuff this season; a stodgy plate of meat and potatoes was just fine here.
As Lage found out in bizarre circumstances, there never is any such thing as a perfect striker. But when Guardiola’s team fall from their levels of near perfection, that is when the lack of a battering ram centre-forward alternative looks most likely to do them damage.
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