Manchester City are having a bad season, there is no doubt about that. But there is a difference of opinion when it comes to deciding why this is the case.
Your more casual observer might put it down to Rodri’s absence with a long-term knee injury, and of course there is a lot of truth in that.
Perhaps you are pitching it somewhere in the middle, nodding sagely about several factors. Yes, Rodri’s injury was the first domino to fall but it exposed an “old” midfield — in Pep Guardiola’s words — and a defence completely blighted by injuries.
But there is another school of thought, one that looks beyond City’s borders. What if Guardiola’s entire playing style is becoming outdated?
This is a theory that has gone mainstream over the past couple of months, warranting a discussion on popular debate show The Overlap and an in-depth article on the BBC Sport website.
“Today, modern football is the way that Bournemouth play, that Newcastle play, Brighton play, Liverpool have always been like that, like we were,” Guardiola said himself in an interview with TNT at the end of last year. “It is modern football. Modern football is not so positional.”
Positional, of course, neatly describes Guardiola’s entire approach — ‘juego de posicion’, as it is known in Spanish — and that comment was the one picked up for the conversation on The Overlap: here is Guardiola suggesting that modern football is moving away from his style, so maybe that is why City have struggled so much over recent months, losing 15 of their last 30 matches.
That was the theme of the BBC article following City’s tepid performance at the Santiago Bernabeu, where it was suggested that their issues this season — injured, ageing players, underperforming stars, low confidence — were symptoms, not causes.
During discussions about this subject online, it was highlighted that City’s style of play is very different to the rest of the league. And it is. But here’s the thing: it always has been.
In previous seasons, their very different approach compared to the rest of the league has been held up as a reason for their dominance. Their slower style has been seen as part of the reason why they control games. As the chart above shows, City’s style this season is certainly not an outlier in the Guardiola era.
So it feels a little reductive to say the style is no longer working now that City are not doing well. Given there are so many obvious factors — injuries, low confidence, stalwarts like Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan playing well below their best — is it not reasonable to say that those things have made the style less effective, in the same way that any team, playing any style, would probably be struggling as well?
And this was Guardiola’s point in that TNT interview, not that the league is getting away from City.
“We have to rise to the rhythm unbelievably,” he also said, “and we could not, simply we could not because we didn’t have the players.”
He goes on to reference the amount of injuries at clubs around Europe and finally offers a solution to the problems facing his side this year… and it did not relate to playing style.
“I reflect that in the future we have to (have) a longer squad,” he said. “I always believed (it has to be done) with few players, but with that the team cannot survive.”
Only last season he did indeed say he would “rather not be a manager” than to have a big squad but that has changed this season, and while he did discuss the changing face of the Premier League in that interview, he feels that the solution is not to rip up his style, but to firstly get his players back fit and secondly to ensure they stay fit by having more options.
The message is clear: take the injuries out of the equation and his style would still work.
Oscar Bobb has been a major loss for Guardiola this season (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
He may be wrong about the continued effectiveness of his own style, and he would probably not admit it even if he felt it, but it would be wrong to suggest, based on what he said at the end of last year, that he thinks City are being left behind.
The discussion has also seemingly disregarded City’s own evolution over the past couple of years, which was something else that Guardiola talked about in that interview.
When giving examples of other teams’ direct approach, he also included City: “Like we were”.
He was asked about this recently, too, and he spoke at length about the changes in the league, as well as those same two points: that the injuries have undermined City’s season and that they have been evolving with the times anyway.
“I saw personally that more teams like playing more man-to-man, more aggressive in your build-up, a few of them play like this,” he said. “In terms of being more direct, English football has been more direct (forever), it has always been, ‘Don’t play much in the middle and play long balls’.
“But in the last years a lot of teams play from behind, Tottenham is an example and many, many other teams.”
He then highlighted a process that City went through in 2022-23; initially that season when they struggled against teams that pressed them man-to-man, but they gradually became more effective because they embraced long balls to Erling Haaland. Something that has been seen this season, too, most notably against Chelsea in January.
Guardiola is confident his team can return to the top (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
“Normally, when you make a positional game against man-to-man it’s completely different but we handled ourselves really well against teams who play man-to-man, we are not concerned about that,” he continued, and then he got to the biggest issue with this season, in his eyes.
“It’s more… always we have the regret this season, I said many times, ‘What would have happened with (only) one, two, three muscular injuries during the season, three or four weeks out?’ But we have central defenders (who are) eight, 10 weeks out, we don’t have Rodri for six or seven months, Oscar (Bobb) is five, six months out.
“I can imagine we would have been more competitive than we have been, but when we have the squad we can play in that way. We can do it.
“While I am the manager, we are going to adjust something depending on the quality of the players or the problems that the opponents (pose) but I think we are going to try to play the way that defined the team for many years, that had success.
“The only difference is that there are more teams that (do) man-marking in our goal kick, they are more aggressive. Before they were more cautious. Now teams are so brave, that is a little bit different. I would say that is the only one, the rest… if you had your team you could compete and you could play the way we have played in the past.”
Rodri’s long-term absence continues to cast a shadow over City’s season (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
It is something City have adapted to, even as they maintain their overall more patient, slower approach in most games. The change may not put them closer to the other teams in the graphics because the majority of opponents still sit deep against City, and when they do that, Guardiola instructs his players to “take a coffee”, to make more passes and be more patient, to avoid counter-attacks.
That approach has been enough to win the title in the past four seasons, so why would it have suddenly stopped? Is it because it is no longer effective, or because the players — for myriad reasons — have not been able to implement it properly?
(Header photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)