Blues leave Pep with a real derby dilemma!
SPOILER alert: this team will not start the derby on Saturday.
Despite Pep Guardiola’s vehement insistence that he does not rest players, he took the opportunity presented to him by this Champions League dead rubber against Marseille to make nine changes from the weekend.
However, that is not to say places weren’t up for grabs for Saturday’s clash with United.
Ederson, Ruben Dias, Rodri and Kevin de Bruyne do not need to be concerned with their omission for this game but those three and Kyle Walker, who returned to the starting XI after missing the last two fixtures, are probably the only five certainties for Old Trafford.
Aymeric Laporte was given the chance to dislodge John Stones in Guardiola’s thinking with his first start in five, Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan duked it out for the slot next to De Bruyne while Phil Foden, Riyad Mahrez and Ferran Torres staked their claim for any one of the three spots in attack that are, surprisingly, all potentially available with Sergio Aguero’s fitness struggles and Gabriel Jesus goalless for a month.
Of those, the two that have almost certainly made Guardiola’s team selection more difficult for Saturday are Gundogan and Bernardo.
Bernardo buzzed around the final third, shuttling the ball between midfield and attack and popping up in all the right places at his busy best. Gundogan was more reserved, holding back alongside Fernandinho and conducting play from deeper, but also showed what a threat he can be from free-kicks.
Whether one or both start alongside De Bruyne and Rodri against United will probably come down to how attacking the manager wants to be and whether he wants Bernardo out wide, and also on how serious a slight knock Gundogan picked up last night is.
None of the three starters in attack could complain if they were nudged out on the evidence of this game. Mahrez was the best of them, showing good skill to help create the opening goal for Torres in the second half as he ran at the defence before slipping the ball into the six-yard box. Decision- making elsewhere was not as successful though. Torres scored but showed his limitations as a centre-forward and is surely better going forward in a more natural position rather than predominantly being used to give Jesus a rest.
Foden started brightly with some dangerous balls into the box from the left yet faded with the rest of the attack as the game fell into a first-half stupor, and an improved second-half in central midfield won’t ultimately count for much given Guardiola’s general reservations about playing him there. And while Laporte was perfectly decent, he was outshone by Stones almost as soon as the England defender replaced Eric Garcia in the 27th minute.
The transformation in Stones this season has been remarkable, going from fifth or sixth-choice centre-back to second only to
Ruben Dias, and he was excellent again in all aspects of the job.
There were some timely interceptions at the back, but he has also grown more confident at moving forward with the ball and it was his pass through the
The transformation in Stones this season has been remarkable and he was excellent in all aspects of the job
Marseille line that helped engineer the opening goal.
It would be a major surprise if he didn’t start the derby ahead of Laporte, something that was unthinkable as recently as the beginning of the season.
The only other question is Aguero. He made his first appearance for a fortnight in a season beset with injury and fitness concerns, and after failing to touch the ball for the first 10 minutes he was on the pitch he showed a striker’s instincts to pop up with a goal in the six-yard box when Steve Mandanda could only parry Nathan Ake’s towering header from a corner. Even if he still is not fit to start a game, the Argentine will be a very handy inclusion in the squad at Old Trafford.
City struggled to break down Marseille who rarely looked for anything other than a draw, with one moment of quality enough to break the deadlock before Aguero made it comfortable and Alvaro Gonzalez added an own goal under pressure from Sterling. Four academy players yanked out of the Under-21s team (who lost without them on Tuesday night in an important competition for them) watched proceedings from the bench.
The drabness of the game was in part due to the increased solidity of the Blues in defence, and they would much rather be dull and in the Champions League knockouts than more entertaining and not in them.
Guardiola had other reasons for picking a strong team, as well as having the utmost respect for the Champions League and respecting the fact that Marseille and Olympiacos were still competing for a Europa League spot.
There was also the chance to set some new club bests in the competition. The manager cares about records – he always wants to be the benchmark and usually is. Taking this Marseille game seriously and playing to win enabled the Blues to notch a glut of minor achievements.
Three points took them to 16 for the group stage, their highest ever and something only three English clubs have previously managed.
And not conceding meant they are the first team to keep five clean sheets in the competition since Juventus in 2016 as well as the first English team for a decade to only concede one goal from their six group games.
Most important, though, for the manager was the continued need for his squad to know that they have to play well and win every game to keep their place in the team rather than resting on reputation or past achievements.
As he heads into one of their biggest fixtures in the calendar on Saturday with his squad looking the strongest they have this season, Guardiola can feel that his actions will leave more of a lasting impression than this forgettable Champions League game against their French visitors.