“Everything is going wrong” was the pull quote from Pep Guardiola’s post-match interview after Manchester City lost 3-1 to Bodo/Glimt in the Champions League on Tuesday evening.
He was referring to a defensive injury crisis but those words allude to something deeper, to a growing sense that the great man has run out of answers.
Where once Guardiola exuded the self-confidence of a tactician who could intervene in the action like a Greek god toying with mere mortals, these days he is more likely to shrug indifferently, telling the story of what he’s witnessed as if the events occurred at random.
One particular interview stands out as an example of his intensity fading and with it his ability to influence what happens within the white lines.
“I'm so old and the players don't respect me,” Guardiola said with a smile after City’s 5-4 victory at Fulham in December. “They don't have to treat their manager in that way.”
It was said in jest, but to even suggest he is growing old and losing command of his squad tells us Guardiola is at least thinking about that possibility; is reflecting on his age after 10 long years in Manchester.
Certainly the super-intense Guardiola of a decade ago would not have reacted that way to a wild 5-4. He would have been furious. He would have demanded his players follow his meticulous instructions more closely, supremely confident that if they had done so the game would have gone differently.
But these days he is beginning to find that his methods just don’t produce the same results. After a while that discovery provokes apathy, not anger, and despite all their injuries (a predictable knock-on effect of the Club World Cup) there is plenty of evidence Guardiola’s tactics have become outdated.
The first major issue is his continual use of a single defensive midfielder in Rodri at a time when the increasing transitional nature of the Premier League – which has well and truly left its possession-suffocation phase – has led to most managers playing a double pivot. Guardiola’s basic 3-1-6 in possession leaves enormous holes in the middle for counter-attacks, as we saw Manchester United exploit via Bruno Fernandes last weekend.
That issue is exacerbated by Man City’s remarkably passive press. It’s been a long time since Guardiola deployed high-pressing football but whereas that worked during the era of high-possession football (when a good counter-press, just after the ball was lost, meant City held 70%+ possession) in the modern game – with those ball-hogging numbers down – minimal pressing allows teams to play through them or take their time picking out a ball over the top.
Guardiola’s deployment of his full-backs is yet another tactical nugget that has remained consistent for too long, leaving the City manager behind the curve. To this day he plays central midfielders here (a trend largely abandoned across the rest of the division) and sits them in the inside channel, their primary role being to support the possession structure.
That means City lack overlapping full-backs to double up with the wingers, hence the ever-increasing sight of City dribblers isolated one-on-one out wide, unable to create space or drag a narrow defensive blockade out of shape.
All of these issues are exacerbated – and symbolised - by the sheer number of diminutive central midfielders shuttling about in Guardiola’s team. Often City will have Matheus Nunes and Nico O’Reilly in the full-back positions and Bernardo Silva as a winger, meaning six central midfielders in the first 11.
That’s half the outfield. It is a throwback to a time when Guardiola’s death by a thousand passes was an innovative way to compete in the Premier League, and it tells us that despite Guardiola’s well-documented attempts to adapt to the tactical times his penchant for the old ways continues to hold him back. You cannot play a more direct and vertical style without pressing high and without using full-backs to increase the width of the system.
But more important than the details is the big picture.
Guardiola is simply falling behind, failing to understand that the rhythms of football have changed dramatically in the last couple of years, as the defeat on Tuesday highlights. Note how all analysis of the game refers to Bodo/Glimt as deserving winners, as the better, more dangerous, more attacking side, despite the Norwegians holding 34% possession.
It was a similar case three days earlier at Old Trafford, where City were beaten by a Manchester United side showered with praise for their exciting attacking football despite sitting back and hitting on the counter.
Indeed a telling line in Gary Neville’s podcast accidentally spoke to a new frontier opening up.
“You’ve just watched 90 minutes of… what I think this club plays like when it’s actually at its very best,” he said, as part of a monologue on Carrick bringing back Sir Alex Ferguson-style football and the ‘United Way’ of wing-based attacks.
“And that’s sometimes unashamedly being without the ball and just being behind the ball and saying, go on, knock us down. We’ll just counter-attack on you.”
That take would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago, when possession and attacking were synonymous, but all of a sudden people are (correctly) re-assessing the Ferguson era as one of counter-attacks and a solid midblock 4-4-2. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer channelled “the gaffer” when he was at Old Trafford but the era labelled him as defensive. Carrick, stepping into a completely different landscape, can pull off the same trick and get the opposite media reaction.
It’s a landscape that might just leave the Manchester City manager behind. The long decade of Guardiolismo is over. It would be fitting if its first major casualty is the man who birthed the movement and now watches, helplessly, as it fades away.
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