Manchester City spent a lot of money on full-backs this summer.
By bringing in Danilo, Benjamin Mendy, and Kyle Walker, Pep Guardiola
strengthened an area that Manchester City were weak in and secured players that are
key to the style the Spanish manager wants to play.
Guardiola’s positional play requires dominance of possession to pull the opposition out
of shape and create space, and full-backs are crucial to this.
Whether using a 3-1-4-2 or 4-1- 4-1, Guardiola expects his full-backs or wing-backs
to push forwards and play with energy and intelligence.
Guardiola sees the pitch as a series of boxes, a more complex and specific division of space
than the simpler and regularly referenced five vertical divisions of central, half-,
and wide spaces.
The intention is that no more than two players should be aligned verticality in any one phase of play.
Guardiola also likes to create two blocks in his team, five defending and five attacking.
By ‘inverting’ his full-backs, essentially pushing them infield rather than creating overlapping
runs outside, this becomes easier and facilitates the aim of positional play, which is to always
have at least one player spare to make the retention of the ball easier, and to create
one v ones out wide.
Inverted full-backs allow the attacking wide players to push higher without
worrying about their defensive duties, and create a series of triangle passing options
when moving the ball out from the back, allowing retention of the ball.
This is one of the reasons that Pep wants a goalkeeper who is capable of passing well
– the use of this square defensive formation with
a deep dropping midfielder, usually Fernandinho for Manchester City, means that as long as
the ‘keeper is competent at passing, City can
build an attack with quick passing from deep and switch the play as the centre-backs and
full-backs split wider if pressured.
Using inverted full-backs in this way also creates a problem for the opposition, who
must pull their own wide men in-field to stop a total mismatch of numbers.
This done either by pushing central midfielders forwards, leaving
a back four to mark five attacking players but
hopefully preventing the ball getting to them in the first instance, or by pulling the wide
attacking midfielders in, which allows six players to defend, but massively restricts
their own opportunities to attack.
It’s very easy to see the influence of Marcelo Bielsa on Guardiola in this shape, the desire
to ensure that there is one more central defender
than striker, and the use of full-backs or wing-backs who can stray into central areas
to create space and numerical superiority.​ Guardiola has also used a 4-3-3 this season,
although with his system, it’s worth remembering that starting formations are essentially
just that, and his players are expected, like Bielsa’s, to be able to fit into a
fluid style and play myriad roles in build-up and defence.
In the 4-3-3, the full-backs are equally dynamic, often pushing very high.
Against Bournemouth, it was noticeable how often City
had five players ahead of the ball, the widest of these often being the full-backs.
This means that David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne, who is rapidly establishing himself both
as a deeper-lying playmaker and the best all-round
creative midfielder in the league, can stay deeper and play defence splitting passes,
while Fernandinho drops into the space around the centre-backs; the five and five split
is maintained because the full-backs provide the
width as Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling drive inwards or directly forwards in support
of Jesus or Aguero up front.
Alternatively, one full-back can stay back and the other pushes us, which allows either
Silva or De Bruyne to get forwards, maintaining
the essential back three, two central midfielders, and five pushing ahead of the ball.
This is why City’s players, and the full-backs especially, must be comfortable in a variety
of roles.
If the basic five and five split is present, and no more than two players are occupying
the same vertical space with ideally five players pushing ahead of the ball, then City
are able both to create overloads and maintain a defensive
shape that should keep them reasonably well protected from counters.
Add to this their ability to keep possession, and no side has
had a greater percentage of the ball over the last two seasons than Guardiola’s men,
and you can see what Guardiola is trying to do,
and why the summer spending was necessary.
Whether it will win him and City the league among a strong field of contenders
remains to be seen.
People often ask us where we get our stats for these videos; a great place to start is
the OneFootball app – the app offers fairly
comprehensive statistical coverage of teams and
players, in game and post-match – so there’s a link in the description if you’d like to download it!
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