One of many misconceptions about Pep Guardiola is that he always conforms to a stubborn stereotype – a coach ruthlessly committed to possession- heavy football.
Guardiola likes his players to be comfortable with the ball at their feet but more crucial to his approach is that they must be adaptable.
In just six games at Manchester City, he’s made widespread changes to the way they play, which under Manuel Pellegrini had become stale and predictable and overly-reliant on individual magic from Sergio Aguero or Yaya Toure.
There’s a good reason why Toure has transformed from an indispensable player to someone with no future at the club – he can, essentially, only play one way. His positional discipline, in particular, is atrocious. Compare to Fernandinho who may lack the eye-catching midfield drives and physical presence but is perfectly adept at carrying out Guardiola’s instructions.
The major revelation has been the Catalan’s deployment of inverted full-backs; in contrast to his Barca model of Dani Alves and Jordi Alba as virtual wide forwards.
Under the process, Bacary Sagna and Aleksandar Kolarov become holding midfielders with Fernandinho then dropping into defence.
The theory is it creates overloads in midfield, provides David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne with greater defensive protection and granting them a greater sense of freedom, while also allowing City’s wingers to stay wide and attack opposition full-backs one on-one.
Jose Mourinho tried to second guess Guardiola on Saturday by playing with natural wingers but was soon disappointed with Guardiola reverting to a traditional set-up and Kolarov and Sagna staying wide, restricting any intended influence Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Jesse Lingard could have.
In Europe, geography dictates teams tend to play with more variation than in the Premier League so we can look forward to seeing more versions of Guardiola’s City.
