Stop getting Pep wrong: explaining the tactical key to why Arsenal, Liverpool will fear Man City charge

You could argue that nobody has really been paying proper attention to Man City during Pep Guardiola’s reign. Here’s why Arsenal and Liverpool ought to.

The analysis of Manchester City’s 3-1 win over Brentford on Monday evening focused on the impact that Phil Foden had on the game.

It was certainly not unworthy of discussion, of course, because his hat-trick was the biggest reason why City won – but the team display from Pep Guardiola’s side was the perfect showcase of what they do best.

In fact, one of the questions posed to Thomas Frank in his TV interview hit on exactly that point – although the Brentford manager didn’t give a particularly insightful answer. He was asked: “Is it hard to impose intensity [on the game], when you’re playing against a team that has the tempo as such a strong feature?”

His reply was pretty generic: “Yeah, of course it’s difficult no matter how you do it against City. As I said, I think we did a lot of things right and it was the key moments where we didn’t have the quality or where they showed their tremendous quality.”

READ: Man City now also nipping at Liverpool heels in the ‘fun to watch’ Premier League table

It is not news that City have individual quality that can win a game. Had it not been Foden, it might have been Kevin De Bruyne, Erling Haaland or Bernardo Silva, say, who scored the goals. Who did the damage is actually irrelevant, it is how they did it that is more important.

You could make a pretty strong case that nobody has really been paying attention to City during Guardiola’s time at the club. The fundamentals of how the team plays have always remained the same: draw opponents into areas of the field that pull them out of shape; invite the press; and create overloads. That is as true now as it was when his City team earned 100 points in 2018, but the style in which they play has changed dramatically.

Still, though, you hear analysis or commentary as if the Guardiola era is in its infancy. The days of City breaking through the lines quickly and creating a ‘false counter-attack’ (drawing lots of opponents into one area and forcing a sudden overload elsewhere) are a thing of the past.

The sporting merit of what City do is easily overlooked. It is Guardiola’s curse: the more he wins, the easier it looks – and the easier it is to attribute that success to a big chequebook and lots and lots of talented individuals.

That spending power plays a part, of course, but others have proven time and again that winning runs and serial dominance cannot be built on foundations of investment alone.

Plenty of teams have been lavishly assembled down the years. While City’s may be the most-lavishly assembled, the degree of difference to what has been forked out is not enough to explain the chasm in overall performance. Manchester United have proven relentlessly in the years since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement that individual quality can often be enough to win matches (sometimes enough matches to have a good season or pick up a trophy), but to compete properly there has to be more.

That is Guardiola’s doing.

The criticism that is often aimed at City is that their style is clinical, cold, boring. It is easy to see why neutrals may think that because, scratch the surface, and all you see is City passing and passing and passing the ball. It’s the antithesis of the English football “up-and-at-’em” mentality, where you go for the jugular as soon as you get the chance.

Sunday’s headline match between Arsenal and Liverpool was an entertaining one for the neutral. Both teams had chances and the momentum swayed between the two. While it seems harsh to say it was won “more by luck than judgement”, it took a pair of howlers from two normally reliable players to get Arsenal into the lead in the second half – after it took an absolute howler from another fairly reliable player to get Liverpool level.

This is the sort of game that would have Guardiola tearing his hair out (if he could).

Control has become a watch-word for boredom, but it is fascinating to see how City seem to care more about the momentum in the game than they do anything else. The 90 minutes at the Brentford Community Stadium were the perfect example, as the hosts wanted to draw City into a game that they just would not accept.

City largely dominated the possession and the territory as they normally do, but there were notable spells of Brentford pressure in the game. Twice in the first half and for a period mid-way through the second, City could only get out with a long ball forward. Returning the ball in that manner encouraged the crowd as much as it did their opponents and, on more than one occasion, Frank was caught on camera geeing up the home fans to keep that pressure up.

All three of those Brentford spells were ended by City rejecting the chance to counter.

That does not fit with what is expected when there is space to drive into – and it probably does not fit with what your average football fan thinks about how City play. Numerous times, Brentford were out of shape and out of position, but it was far more important for City to gain territory than it was to potentially exploit those gaps. Sure, the counter-attack MIGHT result in a good shooting chance, but it is also far more likely to allow Brentford possession again at a time when City are still out of shape and susceptible to coming under pressure for a period once more.

It can be a frustrating watch for both City fans and neutrals when it looks like City are turning down the opportunity to create a good chance, but this is Guardiola looking at the bigger picture. How do you win games? By minimising the opposition’s chances, controlling the territory, and camping your best players in and around the opposing penalty area.

Certainly not by allowing the game to descend into an end-to-end chance-fest – something that a team with the direct skills like Brentford may flourish in.

There is the old saying in English football that when you go to a tough away ground you have to “quieten the crowd”. This is the modern football equivalent. It is pretty hard to get excited about your team’s chances when they have no opportunity to build momentum and it is even worse when they are pinned in their own half by a team that will not give them a sniff of getting out.

Think of that roar when a team wins a corner or a set piece. We know implicitly that they are not as dangerous as they seem, but we understand on a subconscious level at least that this is now an opportunity to build or capitalise on momentum.

During the pandemic, when football was forced to be behind-closed-doors, home advantage disappeared. It ended up suiting City perfectly, as Guardiola entered the ‘false nine’ era at the Etihad, because it removed any emotional encouragement from the stands. Opposing fans had no way of lifting their side.

There was even the bizarre effect that City had to re-learn how to play in front of their own fans. It is really hard to turn down a counter-attack when 50-odd thousand people are urging you to play that forward ball, but when winning 1-0 in the 85th minute, the rational thing to do is turn around and keep possession. You try making that decision when you’re being screamed at from all four stands around you to “play him in, we can kill this if he scores!”

All of this does mean that City’s defeats tend to follow the same pattern. It is why, so often when City lose, they have won the xG: the opposition need to score one of their few chances and City need to miss a lot.

Football is football and unpredictable things happen: sometimes that full-back who has never scored hits a one-in-a-million effort in off the post and sometimes the best players in the world miss an open goal. Sometimes teams win with their only shot against a side that has battered them for 89 of the 90 minutes.

But the reason why City so often feel so inevitable at this stage in the season is because they are able to control matches like no other team. There would have been very little for Guardiola to complain about had his team lost against Brentford because they did everything right to win the game. In the end, they got the necessary goals to turn around the 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 victory.

If City are to make it an unprecedented four Premier League titles in a row, their biggest asset will be their ability to control the momentum in matches. The individuals that produce the big goals and the big moments can only do that from such a solid starting point.

David Mooney is the creator and host of the Blue Moon Podcast