\n<\/p>\n
Looking back, clues to this final system had been there all season.<\/p>\n
Doku’s one-against-one threat on the left had required teams to double up on him since August. O’Reilly’s runs began to bear fruit as early as September.<\/p>\n
Silva’s intelligent pressing and build-up helped mitigate City’s areas of weakness from November onwards.<\/p>\n
Haaland and Semenyo moving in-field as Nunes pushed up to provide width, supplied by the two-footed Cherki, gave City solutions teams were unable to prepare for.<\/p>\n
Behind them, Khusanov’s pace provided City with a get-out-of-jail-free card when they held their high line.<\/p>\n
Their press evolved too. Guardiola tried several versions through the year before settling on one where the wingers pressed centre-backs while blocking passes wide, with Haaland and Cherki blocking the middle of the pitch. Those roles suited the more physical wingers and protected the less defensive Haaland and Cherki.<\/p>\n
City were compact and Silva and Rodri swept up any second balls too.<\/p>\n
A common myth in football is that “playing like Guardiola” is creating a side that looks like Barcelona did in 2009.<\/p>\n
Guardiola has admitted that he wins because of the players he has, which is partly down to City’s ability to spend big.<\/p>\n
His ability to continually reinvent his squads in response to the players he has available and the tactical trends of the league, however, remains second to none.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looking back, clues to this final system had been there<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}