How Manchester City rediscovered their magic
When Manchester City drew 1-1 at home to West Bromwich Albion on December 15, 2020, it seemed possible that this was, against an admittedly high bar, the worst side Pep Guardiola had ever managed. They seemed sluggish and unimaginative, the snap that had once characterised their press entirely absent. Two months later they were top of the Premier League having won every game they’d played since that draw, and the talk was of a possible quadruple.
Which suggests, perhaps, how easy it is to be lured into snap judgements, to be sucked in by football’s habitual narrative that when a slide begins it can be halted only by the sacrifice of the manager.
But that’s not to say that the worries about City in the early part of the season were unjustified. They were slow and the 5-2 home defeat to Leicester showed their problems adjusting to a slightly altered approach, the use of a second deep-lying midfielder placing enormous pressure on Kevin De Bruyne and giving Nampalys Mendy and Youri Tielemans time to play through the press.
At the time, there were twin concerns. Firstly, was this the downturn that often afflicts managers after three to four years in a job? Football always seems to function on these three-year cycles, after which there is a need to rejuvenate to stave off entropy, whether that is tweaking tactics, changing a handful of players
There is a broader lesson there for clubs… sometimes even in modern football, managers can have second comings
or replacing the manager. With high-intensity, high-pressing coaches like Guardiola, that seems particularly true and the collapse when it comes can be abrupt if players, worn down by the extreme demands placed upon them, lose faith in the project.
And secondly, this seemed a lot like what often goes wrong for Guardiola in Europe. For a while it was a recurring theme that his sides would be picked off on the break in European knockout ties, occasionally quite unluckily (Barcelona v Chelsea in 2012; Bayern v Real Madrid in 2014; Bayern v Atletico in 2016). Then it became the case that his own efforts to prevent that happening actually made it more likely to happen (Manchester City v Liverpool in 2018; Manchester City v Lyon in 2020). It felt as though we’d seen this before: that by slowing the game down, reducing the intensity of the press to protect City against balls played in behind them, they sacrificed a lot of what made them great and they became ponderous.
But then, thanks in part to the extraordinary form of Ilkay Gundogan, playing not as a “free eight” (to use the term De Bruyne coined of the roles he and David Silva occupied in Guardiola’s first couple of seasons at City), but as a sort of “repressed eight”. With Gundogan able to support Rodri at the back of midfield, but still push forward with devastating effect, linking with a more creative midfielder
– De Bruyne or Bernardo Silva – in front of him, everything clicked.
Of greater significance, perhaps, is the tightening up that happened at the back. Pressing is a notoriously difficult aspect of the game to gauge statistically, but one measure is to look at pressures in the final third as a proportion of total pressures: where is a side looking to win the ball back? For four years City and Liverpool had vied to be top of that metric; this season Liverpool are way out in front with City in fifth: there has been a conscious easing off.
Between that West Brom game and the 4-1 thrashing at Anfield on February 7, City only conceded one goal in the league, and that against Chelsea late on when they were already 3-0 up. It’s true that it was not the most testing run of fixtures, so it may be that elite sides can still expose them, and it will be a concern that Liverpool’s penalty against City came from a straightforward ball in behind, but City look much more solid; not quite as brilliant as two or three years ago but perhaps better balanced.
There is a broader lesson there for clubs. City had faith in Guardiola and backed him in the summer with two costly central defenders, one of whom has barely played, but he has proved himself agile enough to adapt to circumstance and – perhaps – improve on what had gone before. Certainly the talk of decline has rapidly disappeared.
Tottenham, perhaps, given how things have turned out, may think they should have been more patient with Mauricio Pochettino and given him time and resources to rebuild a squad that had gone stale. And Liverpool in particular, can take heart: sometimes even in modern football, managers can have second comings. A concentration of injuries and the pandemic have perhaps exacerbated the situation, but they now are essentially where City were last season: at the end of a cycle and in need of a refurb. Given Jurgen Klopp’s stature, there’s no reason to think he cannot be as successful at that as Pep Guardiola has been. Not all declines are irreversible.