Manchester City have been one of the most dominant teams in the league this year, they barely concede any goals and score a lot of them. So far they have only conceded 9 goals in 16 games which is the lowest in the league, and they have scored 33 goals which is the 3rd most in the league.
They are a team with a lot of depth and options in every position, and have so many dangerous players to consider. Their top scorer this season has been Bernardo Silva who has scored 7 goals and their most creative player has been Gabriel Jesus who has 6 assists. There are many others we could talk about but at least from direct goal contributions they have been their most impactful players.
They have played a 4-3-3 system in every game of this season bar one, however the shape they sit in changes a lot depending on which phase of their play they are in. While officially their formation is 4-3-3 they do look like a 4-2-3-1 in deeper areas, like below.
Then as they progress into the final third their shape looks more like their official 4-3-3 formation, like below.
Which should mean our shape should be our familiar 4-1-4-1 shape to match their system man for man. However at times it may also look like we have a 4-2-3-1 when their double pivot changes to a single pivot. When we are out of possession we will look like the below.
To say Man City’s players will be difficult to man mark is putting it mildly, they have some of the best ball carriers in the league, with the likes of Jack Grealish, Bernardo Silva & Raheem Sterling just to name a few.
Our performance against Chelsea has raised my hopes slightly, as we gave all we had against Chelsea and were so close to getting a point until the final few minutes.
Most people should be aware of the style of play Man City employ, but if you are not they are a possession based side who have kept the ball more than any team in the league with 66.8% average possession. They average the most touches p90 in the league with 812 touches p90 which includes 626 passes p90.
In addition their play focuses heavily on penetrating the box with direct running something they do more than anyone else with the most carries into the penalty area in the league with 10.7 penalty box carries p90.
They also attempted the most crosses in the league with 15.8 crosses attempted p90 but only completing the 7th most. This is likely to do with other teams “Parking the bus” and making it difficult for them to get deliveries into the box.
They have attempted the least pressures in the league overall but the 5th most high pressures, meaning when they do lose the ball it doesn’t usually progress into their own half so their middle third and defensive third pressures are very low. This is also a product of their own hunger for possession, if they have the ball they don’t need to press.
When it comes to other teams creating against them they are very good at stopping open play chances conceding the least Shot Creating actions from live play. We will have to make the most of any opportunities we do get.
Stats wise they do not really have any major vulnerabilities across their team, most of their squad are proficient at stopping direct dribblers with maybe the only one who can be dribbled by is Rodri but even his dribble duel success isn’t too low at 44% this season.
I feel our best chance of hurting Man City could be by causing as much chaos as we can, if we can turn this game into a transitional end to end battle we could exploit this chaos to create chances, especially if we can get Raphinha on the ball one on one with whoever he will come against which I think is likely to be Zinchenko as fortunately Joao Cancelo is banned for this game.
Moving on to my expected line-up, barring no new injury issues I would imagine we will set up something like the below.
There are some other possibilities, Klich may not be involved and if he isn’t I would expect Dallas to take his place in midfield and Jamie Shackleton go to RB. Also there is a chance that Joe Gelhardt gets a chance which would probably put Jack Harrison on the bench and Dan James takes his place at LM.
It is always hard to predict what Bielsa will do, but I would imagine most of the squad will be similar with how many injuries we have at the moment.
Moving on to how Man City may line-up, I would guess the below.
They of course have many other options, Phil Foden could come in to any position from midfield upwards for them. Aymeric Laporte could play also in CB instead of John Stones. Another option they have in wide area’s is Riyad Mahrez who can play LW or RW.
No matter who they play and where they will be a tough opposition to play against, all of their players have capability to hurt us and I am not going to cover any individual players in this as I feel most viewers will be well aware of the talent at Pep Guardiola’s disposal.
We saw last season we have the capability to beat this side, in fact we were unbeaten in both fixtures last season. On our day we have the capability to beat anyone. If we see a similar performance to what we saw against Chelsea I hold out hope we can gain at least a point.
Thanks for Reading
Martin Riley
All Data used in this article was sourced from FBREF.com
If you want to follow Martin, he can be found mainly on Twitter at the below
https://twitter.com/MartinCBMRiley