How Guardiola has led Manchester City to a historic season
It’s yet another beautiful morning in May. Manchester City have won yet another Premier League title in a historic season, that can possibly become their best season in history.
The thing is though, it may not be the most amazing football we’ve ever seen from Manchester City, but it definitely was the most mature, the most complex, yet the most straightforward, and it made them win games when all else failed.
On 17 April 2019, Tottenham Hotspur beat Manchester City in the quarter-finals and advanced to the Champions League semis for the first time in their history. The odds were in City’s favor to win, but the tactics and lineups that Guardiola used in the first leg were questionable, to say the least.
The same thing happened in their game against Lyon last season. People were simply questioning the man’s ideas. “Why wouldn’t you play the same team that beat Real Madrid?”
They had a point. I mean, there’s a whole lot more to it than meets the eye. But, the point was valid. Guardiola this season not only accepted that, but embraced it as well.
Guardiola let go of his tactical stubbornness at times, making Manchester City a much more flexible team than ever.
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Fast forward to the 2020-21 season. Guardiola wasn’t as much for the aesthetically pleasing football as much as he was for winning. He wanted the wins, no matter how he got them.
To do that, he made his defense strong, and it went from a defense that sometimes had a vulnerable high line to being the best back-four in the league. Well, they also played some pretty amazing football in many, many games. They’re Guardiola’s team, after all.
He slowed everything down. There’s a post by writer Ryan O’Hanlon that talks about how he has slowed down his team’s build-up speed, which makes the other teams more restless and more prone to errors.
Manchester City hasn’t scored nearly as many goals as he used to in previous seasons. If you compare this season’s total (72 in 35 games) to their the three seasons prior (102, 95, 106), it’s not nearly as much. But the team’s much more tactically versatile now than they’ve ever been before.
They don’t mind sitting back (in some particular games). They don’t mind playing a striker-less team with four different false-nines at different points in time. They don’t mind playing out an extremely high counter-press or doing only the occasional pressing.
This team may not be the most free-scoring you’ll ever see. Hell, it’s not even their best defensive record (23 conceded in 2018-19) but they certainly know how to get the job done in almost all competitions, something which was missing in previous seasons.
They’ve won the Premier League. They’ve won the League Cup. They’re in the final of the Champions League for the first time in their history.
Yes, they do have issues. Clear issues. But none of them is something that Guardiola couldn’t solve, for at least the remainder of the season. It’s been proven that they need a striker, but Manchester City still managed to compete on all fronts without even PLAYING a striker in many games.
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Yes, they’ve spent money. A lot of money. But there’s a difference between spending a lot of money on players and spending the right amount of money on the right players that fit into your system. Manchester City know that. Many other top clubs do not. Think about that.