Boring football, a thousand passes to the death, why does Guardiola hate dribbling and pacy players?, too much back-passes!...what happened to wingers being wingers etc.
Guardiola faced a lot of criticism due to his obsession with control in the last couple of years with the introduction of a “control based” wing pairing of Bernardo Silva and Jack Grealish.
For a while, teams have adopted the strategy of overloading City's midfield in order to block passing lanes into the wings but while City did escape most times their slow approach on the wings meant Grealish and Bernardo would face two v one situations but with the introduction of Doku last season and Savinho this season the gaffer has a new plan.
what exactly does this new plan entail? For starters, Pep has opted for a more direct method of attack as Doku and Savinho add pace to the attack and can dribble their way out of one v one or two v one situations as well as create chances via their dribbles. This plan maximizes their strengths and closes a loophole the squad faced previously.
To shade more light, these are the strengths of the pair, Doku—short & medium pace, one v one dribbling(quick turns in direction), quick bursts & acceleration and Savinho—short/medium/long pace, steady acceleration, two-way dribbling(drift into central space and going down the touchline), crossing, one-twos and creative passing.
In just 3 games, Doku has attempted 19 dribbles, 12 of those were successful with 5 chances created meanwhile Savinho in 2 games attempted 5 dribbles, 4 of those were successful with 5 chances created, 1 assist and a penalty won. Quite impressive right? these numbers will only increase as City build momentum.
With all these listed threats and direct method of creation, to make this style of play balanced and effective it requires specific services from the likes of Rico Lewis—space variant(attack all spaces), Bernardo—free role(cover ground/switch with KDB at intervals), and Kevin De Bruyne—deep laying playmaker(from left/right side) to make the system tick.
This system still has a small sample size but the early adaptation shows that City can now hurt you through the centre—long range shots, inside the opposition's box, and the wings—in transitions, crosses, quick one-twos, cutbacks, overloads, overlaps & underlaps at a much faster rate while some weaknesses emerge in transitions due to isolation of Kovacic(the lone 6) but there are also benefits to the system.
The biggest beneficiary of this system is Erling Braüt Haaland as Pep has tailored the system to find him more naturally as opposed to forcing the ball to him which we saw in his first season. He has already recorded 7 goals in 3 matches from 60 touches and 14 shots.
The underlying stats show Manchester City are already primed for success. It remains to be seen how Pep incorporates Rodri and Foden into his new found multiverse of madness. For now we wait and see
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