Things still aren’t quite right at Manchester City, as another dramatic defeat on Tuesday — this time at the hands of Real Madrid — emphatically underlined.
Conceding in the 86th and 92nd minutes to fumble away a 2-1 lead in the first leg of that Champions League play-off, it was the ninth time City have allowed two or more goals in a 10-minute spell this season, and their third spectacular collapse in Europe alone. A 3-3 home draw with Feyenoord in November, which came off the back of five consecutive defeats, was an alarming early sign of their crumbling confidence, while a 4-2 defeat away to Paris Saint-Germain two months later was close to the nadir.
There looked to be green shoots of recovery in between, but manager Pep Guardiola has been consistent in his assessment of his side. After it was put to him that City might have been back to their best in a 4-1 win against West Ham in early January, the 54-year-old nearly fell off his chair.
“No. We saw for eight years our level. We are not at our level,” he said. “We won and we are so happy, and it will help us, but our performance was not good.”
The main issues behind City’s struggles this season are not simple to fix in the short term, and though their crippling injury situation has eased in recent weeks, and the squad also bolstered by winter transfer window additions, it’s that same lack of confidence — and the errors that come with it — that continue to undermine Guardiola’s attempts to restore his team to their top level.
The Spaniard has made plenty of tweaks out of necessity, and has tried to be inventive too throughout these testing times — but what, if anything, will stick?
Sitting off the ball
City hit some intriguing lows across the winter period. While their 46.7 per cent share of possession against Leicester just after Christmas was their lowest against a newly-promoted side in the nine-season Guardiola era, they held just 36.3 per cent of the ball during the first half in Paris, by far their lowest in an opening 45 minutes during his reign.
So many of City’s issues have hinged on the midfield, where they lack the energy and physicality to stop counter-attacks through the centre of the team after they lose the ball. Guardiola usually looks to take the sting out of games by keeping possession, but the City players most suited to controlling the tempo — Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, Rico Lewis — have been among those struggling the most for form.
Guardiola alluded to those issues on Friday, looking back on that midweek Madrid defeat. “The problem is we don’t rest with the ball,” he told The Athletic. “In the big, big success of the team, we were able to do 20, 25, 30 sequences of passes in the opponents’ half, and now we are not able to do it.”
The solution has quickly become the problem, and the more City try to look like their usual selves, the more they cede possession and leave themselves open to quick opposition breaks. Full-backs in midfield are often caught up the pitch, leaving centre-backs — often playing while carrying knocks — exposed.
It’s why City have trialled a different approach, standing off the opposition and allowing them more of the ball. While never a true low block, Guardiola seemed happier to watch his team sit back and try to be compact.
In that December game against Leicester, for example, the grab below was taken halfway through an uninterrupted passage of play from the home side that lasted two minutes and 15 seconds, with City in a compact 4-4-2 shape, allowing their opponents the ball on the halfway line.
It’s not something we have seen too much more of from City since, but Guardiola admitted again yesterday that it might be an option to drop deep and stay compact going forward, suggesting that his team cannot “sustain” that pressure for 90 minutes at a time.
Sitting deeper has not guaranteed defensive solidity for City — they can still look uncoordinated and tired when they do choose to move up as a unit — but the very fact that Guardiola has considered playing more passively without the ball points to an acceptance of the situation.
Moving Jack Grealish into midfield
This was something that appeared briefly and tantalisingly, but then disappeared into the ether, thanks to injuries and Guardiola’s apparent dissatisfaction with Grealish.
The England international first stepped into the middle against Nottingham Forest at the start of December. Coming just a few days after a 2-0 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield, it really felt like City needed something different, particularly some energy in midfield, and it looked for a short time like Grealish might provide it.
“We controlled the game and Jack gave us that pace,” Guardiola said afterwards. “When to accelerate and control; he did it really good. I know his quality. He has attributes to play holding midfield, keep the ball, break the lines and (he has) composure.”
After missing the next game at Crystal Palace through injury, Grealish also played centrally against Juventus a few days later but since then, he has either been absent or left out, with Guardiola criticising his application after that win over West Ham on January 4.
That performance against Forest was by far the most impressive of the last couple of months and it also featured another reshuffle, one which worked in conjunction with Grealish’s temporary rehousing.
Grealish played well in his usual position on the left against Real Madrid – before being forced off by injury (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
Given his man-of-the-match performance against Leyton Orient in the FA Cup last Saturday, and a positive 30-minute spell out on the left against Madrid, it’s unlikely we’ll see Grealish in that role too often. But like John Stones, Manuel Akanji, Josko Gvardiol and the many other players who have been drafted in to try to cover the Rodri-sized hole in midfield, Grealish’s ball retention and ability to control the tempo gives Guardiola another option for rotation.
Inverting Josko Gvardiol
Gvardiol spent the end of last season playing high on the left wing but this season his role has been more varied. Against Arsenal in September, before Rodri got injured midway through the first half and the whole house of cards came down, Gvardiol was used as the inverted full-back and was operating in attacking areas.
Early in the season, he was generally kept at the back but, over the past few months, he has been pushed forwards again. He was again asked to move inside for the visit of Forest in December, linking up well with Grealish and helping to dismantle an in-form side’s counter-attacking threat by drawing Anthony Elanga back to mark him.
Gvardiol and Grealish also helped to beef up City’s counter-pressing efforts, as the below sequence shows.
Bernardo’s loose pass invites Forest to spring forward, with Grealish, Gundogan and Gvardiol caught in their midfield positions, but they are able to drop back quickly and block out the forward pass, with the latter illustrating the value of his pace and power with a steaming recovery run.
Grealish leaves a healthy shoulder-barge on Alex Moreno in frame three and Forest are forced to recycle from exactly the kind of situation that has generally led to chances against City this year.
Pace and power in the middle are things that City need and this game hinted Gvardiol could be a solution to that. Although, with the arrival of Nico Gonzalez on deadline day last Monday, it might be his attacking instincts that are called upon in the coming weeks.
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All-out attack/wide full-backs
With five goals and that assist against Madrid so far this campaign, Gvardiol has been one of the brightest sparks going forward for City, able to make an impact from anywhere — apart from when he is forced to play centre-back. Giving him the ability to attack freely down the flanks in a traditional full-back role has also been a huge hit.
A lightning start against Everton in late December was an excellent example of how City can overwhelm deep blocks by pushing their full-backs on, Gvardiol being particularly dangerous when he can time his deep runs to take players away from the winger or charge into the box himself. The second half against Club Brugge a month later, after a ponderous opening 45 minutes with the Croatian shackled to a wide centre-back role, was another clear example of the forward thrust he can provide.
(Michael Regan/Getty Images)
The greatest success of Guardiola’s full-back experiment was the 3-1 win over Chelsea on January 25, with Matheus Nunes hanging wide on the opposite side. This allowed Gvardiol to link up with new signing Omar Marmoush, the pair creating space for each other with some encouraging movements to exploit their opponent’s high line, and keeping the Egyptian forward close to striker Erling Haaland.
City’s wingers look more dangerous with overlapping runs to drag players out of their settled defensive shape, and while they won’t always face teams as adventurous without the ball as Chelsea, Gvardiol’s disruptive presence in the final third is another good option.
Savinho on the left wing
As far back as the Community Shield in August, Guardiola talked about the prospect of his wingers standing up crosses to the far post and a week later, for City’s opening league game at Chelsea, he asked the left-footed Savinho to start on the left wing and the right-footed Jeremy Doku to play on the right.
The intention seemed to be to get them to drive to the byline and deliver crosses, but the players took it upon themselves to switch sides after 15 minutes and, to be fair to them, they both played much better for it — but it did mean that the byline-crosses plan fell by the wayside.
Savinho has returned to the left on occasion and has looked more dangerous when able to target the byline, although the inconsistency of his form overall makes it hard to know what to expect. From the right, the Brazilian is always keen to cut inside and impact the play with shots and passes into the box on his stronger foot, but driving into more crowded areas means his threat is often snuffed out, often ending with him aiming poor-quality efforts at goal.
(Carl Recine/Getty Images)
He was at his best for Girona last season, when the rest of his La Liga team worked to isolate him against his full-back on the left. As predictable as it became, few defenders can compete with his burst of acceleration, as we saw against West Ham last month when he continually took Vladimir Coufal on the outside. His impact off the bench to help City turn the game around against Brugge three weeks later was another pleasing display from the 20-year-old on that side.
His assist map at Girona last season shows just how dangerous he was when he could pick out his strike partner — the 6ft 2in (189cm) Artem Dovbyk — with a clipped ball in. It’s no surprise the same trick can work with a taller, more prolific centre-forward in Haaland.
“Having old-fashioned football with left foot on the left and right on the right: these kinds of crosses help the kind of striker we have,” Guardiola said after the West Ham game.
With Gvardiol offering support, City’s improving left-side dynamics are their most positive development from three tough months.
Inverting… everyone
While probably an attempt to exploit Madrid’s specific out-of-possession weaknesses, Guardiola’s decision to play five centre-backs against the defending European champions on Tuesday night was another classic curveball and a glimpse — with as close to a fully-fit squad as he has had all season — into how the rest of the campaign could play out.
Sources close to Guardiola indicated at the start of City’s bad run that one of his first solutions would have been to use Akanji as a holding midfielder, purely to make the team more robust and stable, and perhaps this was still in his thinking months later, albeit with Stones starting in the middle and Akanji moving up.
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Gvardiol was again shifted around, now back into an inverted full-back role after a few weeks out on the flank, while Akanji did the same on the opposite side, helping to form a 2-3 shape in build-up.
Madrid have been poor at blocking the first pass into midfield in their 4-4-2 midblock this season, so Guardiola was likely trying to make that task harder for forwards Vinicius Junior and Kylian Mbappe, with three players lurking behind them.
That then gave Madrid’s midfield four a choice — to step up, apply pressure on Stones, and potentially leave space for City’s creative players to exploit, or to step off, protect the space, and allow Stones time on the ball. They opted for the latter, allowing the England international to run the game throughout the first half.
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There were moments during the game where Guardiola’s tactical ploy worked perfectly, but City were slow to recognise their numerical advantages and punish Madrid in the way Barcelona have done in two separate encounters this season.
Minutes on from the situation above, a similar sequence unfolds with the ball at goalkeeper Ederson’s feet. City’s full-backs both tuck inside, and Madrid’s front two expect a ball out to one of the centre-backs, but Ederson picks the pass through the middle of them to Stones.
The reactions of Madrid’s players tell us that this is a familiar problem; Vinicius Jr and Mbappe throw their hands in the air, while midfielder Dani Ceballos looks back to check his defenders are willing to follow him if he steps up.
There was a chance for City to move the ball quickly here, but their dangerous players don’t recognise the opportunity to get in behind Madrid’s back-tracking midfield. Stones carries the ball forward, but the option to drive through the centre is closed down and City instead go wide, where the attack fizzles out.
While they conceded chances to Madrid’s dangerous individual players in the first half, City were largely in control. It was only when substitutions were made, their physicality declined and mistakes crept in once again, that things spiralled out of control.
Where City go from here is anyone’s guess, but one thing that remains clear is Guardiola’s desire to improve his team’s capacity to control games with the ball.
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“Of course, you have to insist (on playing such a style); the team is built for that,” he told The Athletic. ‘Do you think we can compete against the physicality of Newcastle? Liverpool have always been stronger than us, Arsenal too, but before we had the confidence to play with the ball, now we are suffering when we have the ball, and it has never happened before.”
Unprecedented times have called for drastic solutions, and while Guardiola has cycled through various approaches, squeezing every last drop from Bernardo, Gvardiol, Lewis and Gundogan to get through the injury crisis, his latest comments suggest that with a healthier squad, City are going to try to get through this their own way — with their foot on the ball.
(Top photo: Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
