admin Manchester City have had a good start to the season but are still not at their best.
As Pep Guardiola always argues, the first half of the Premier League season is not where you want to be at your best.
It’s about getting the job done, collecting those points while saving as much energy as possible and ensuring that by the time the new year rolls around, you’re still in a strong position in the title race. Last week, Guardiola even admitted that qualifying for the Champions League knockout stages is now his biggest priority.
So not only are Manchester City expected to underperform them in the first few games of the season, but that’s entirely intentional.You don’t want to play too hard, too early, play your best from the start, because that’s not sustainable. This will take a physical and mental toll, leading to exhaustion at the worst possible time. You cannot improve your performance at the end of the season if you are already at your best.
The last two defeats to Arsenal and Wolves – the first consecutive defeats since 2018 – have brought a bit of negativity but despite this, Man City have still started the season extremely strongly. They won their first six games in a row and it took until February to win that many games in a row last season.
So there’s nothing wrong with anything. City clearly wanted to win these two matches, but they were not yet decisive. Even with all this, there is still some concern about how recent presentations have seemed more disjointed and flat than one might expect, even at this early stage of the campaign.
There has been no such intensity and ruthlessness in attacking areas so far, with City lacking a creative spark and Erling Haaland once again creating an isolated figure. The Blues scored 23 goals in their first eight games last season (and will score 10 more in the next two), but that number has dropped to just 17 this season.
Haaland himself has gone from 15 at this stage 12 months ago to eight. It’s still a remarkable return and if he maintains this pace he’ll break another scoring record with 38. But it’s clear things aren’t going as they did in 2023.
Again, this is hardly surprising since the starting lineup is very different with humans constantly advancing towards the trio. Some players who are indispensable in this system did not play.Ilkay Gundogan and Riyad Mahrez are gone, Kevin De Bruyne is sidelined until the new year while Jack Grealish, Bernardo Silva, Rodri and John Stones are also unavailable at times.
Fortunately, everyone except De Bruyne will be fully fit again after the international break and it is the return of Rodri and Stones that could be the catalyst that helps City get back on track . Rodri doesn’t need to explain. City have lost all three games in which he has been suspended and it is clear how important he is to the team.
But Stones also missed a huge opportunity as his absence led to a change in tactical set-up.The number 5 was revealed last season when he moved to central midfield from right-back or centre-back and helped City dominate games with the ball.
Guardiola has been tinkering with his team, finding a solution to gather more people to support Haaland and the way to do that is to push Stones further forward to allow Gundogan and De Bruyne to step up. With Stones there to close the gap, Man City no longer have a big hole to exploit if they lose the ball. As Stones gained confidence, he helped build more attacks himself.
But without Stones, Guardiola has changed the system by instead pushing Kyle Walker further forward into a winger role to allow Phil Foden to cut further inside and join the likes of Julian Alvarez and Mateo Kovacic in those attacking positions. Though it worked wonders against Newcastle, it has since started to falter.
Foden, Alvarez and Kovacic or Matheus Nunes have often been too close together and often stepped on each other’s toes, narrowing City’s play and congesting the attacking area. It makes space harder to find for Haaland, rather than giving him the support he needs with incisive passing and dangerous crosses.
It has in turn left City weaker on the flanks, with Walker having to cover the whole right by himself and the left winger – Foden, Jack Grealish or Jeremy Doku – often having to play a more wing-back role themselves. With Walker further up, the defence has been left lopsided and with less midfield cover City can be much easier to stretch and outnumber on counterattacks, as what happened against Wolves.
But with Stones’ return City will be able to revert back to the system that worked so perfectly well for them last season. Performances could be about to significantly improve as a result.
