It’s been a long time since Pep Guardiola showed us his tactical genius.
- Published before Man City beat Club Brugge to reach Champions League knockout stage
He used to be the most consistent innovator in the game, an incessant thirst for new ideas driving him to colossal success in three different countries, but perhaps lulled into a false sense of security by success at Manchester City, he’s spent the last few seasons stripping back layers, rather than adding them.
Four centre-backs across the defence, a proper striker up front, and a barely-pressing 4-4-2 formation: Guardiola has slowly refined Man City into a caricature of an old-fashioned idea of English football, in the process going from football’s most progressive thinker to a strangely regressive one.
But after a long and wearying campaign, it looks as though Guardiola has finally remembered that he needs to return to the forefront of tactics if he is to remain one of the best managers in the world.
“The way that modern football is, is the way that Bournemouth play, the way that Brighton play, that Newcastle play, like we were [playing], that is modern football," Guardiola said in a press conference prior to the game.
“Today, modern football is not positional, you have to ride the rhythm.”
It’s rare that Guardiola talks about tactical fashion, so those comments tell us he is thinking deeply about rebuilding his team. How Man City approached playing Chelsea was an even bigger hint.
Never before has a Guardiola team played like they did on Sunday, with constant runners on the shoulder of the last defender and frequent long balls forward.
Omar Marmoush, though supposedly playing on the left, stood next to Erling Haaland and made runs that created an urgently vertical front two, while both full-backs Josko Gvardiol and Matheus Nunes made similar inverted runs.
It was a combination of Nunes’s run through on goal, and Gvardiola appearing centrally for the rebound, that got Man City their first.
Then, almost in protest against everything a Guardiola team is supposed to stand for, Haaland received a long goal kick to bludgeon his way through for the second, before the striker then held up the ball and flicked it on for Phil Foden in a 90s-style one-two for the third.
No mistakes from Phil Foden 😤 pic.twitter.com/prYUHJbjYo
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) January 25, 2025
It was a lot more like watching Bournemouth than an increasingly clunky and passive Man City, and the fact that it led to all three of their goals points to a new direction for the team.
Certainly without Rodri, Man City will not be able to entirely regain control of matches in the old way, whereas to instil a considerably more direct approach – to allow the players to improvise and burst forward, pushing the other team back – should help City shake themselves out of a hypnotic rhythm.
In other words, a more free-form approach would counterintuitively make City into a more contemporary team under Guardiola while simultaneously creating the conditions for a return to something more ordered and controlled.
It may prove to be a one-off, but more likely Guardiola has recognised that his team need to be jolted into a different headspace – and has acknowledged that Marmoush and Haaland in particular simply need to be fed in a different way.
At the very least, Arsenal can expect this treatment on Sunday considering how cagey and Mourinho-ish their head to heads have been over the last 12 months.
Arsenal’s lower block will resemble Enzo Maresca’s approach, hence opening the hosts to a similar vulnerability should Haaland and Marmoush stretch the back line.
Verticality, urgency, and riding the rhythm: it isn’t at all what Man City were supposed to stand for under Guardiola.
But the 2024/25 campaign has taught us that Guardiola’s approach has become outdated – and victory over Chelsea showed that, finally, Pep has realised a significant rewrite is needed to save their season and begin the final chapter of his managerial career.
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