Manchester City head into the Manchester Derby on the back of a formation change and three wins on the spin. The decision from Pep Guardiola to switch to a 3-4-3 formation at half-time against Sheffield United has been a successful one. Underneath the success, though, is a concerning lack of substances with the Manchester Derby up next.
A New Pep Guardiola Formation Takes on Manchester United
The Recent Run Under Pep Guardiola
Manchester City’s three straight wins have come against Sheffield United, Everton and Port Vale. It’s hardly a murderer’s row of talent, but the Blades were able to cause City problems that forced Guardiola to change his system. In the last two games, he has used the system to play aggressive, attacking line-ups, while freeing his full-backs of some defensive responsibility.
Against Everton, it was Rodrigo and, against Port Vale, it was Oleksandr Zinchenko. Both midfielders, both playing at centre-back; balancing the line between midfielder and defender. Their move into defence has opened up a ton of space for Manchester City’s full-backs. Joao Cancelo, Benjamin Mendy and Angelino all had all kinds of time going forward in these last two-and-a-half games.
Neither tactic has worked out with sterling results. Zinchenko was beaten pretty badly on the cross that came in for Port Vale’s shock goal, scored by Tom Pope. On the other hand, Zinchenko pushing forward overloaded the League Two side’s defence on multiple occasions, ones which led to him being open enough to shoot and score the opening goal.
Entering the Manchester Derby
The concerning part about the formation heading into the Manchester Derby is the distinct lack of stability it has brought with it. It’s easy to expect a team that changes their formation like this to be better defensively. Even with two completely different back three’s, the team still struggled in the same area that they had before the switch.
There has been a glaring lack of thought speed that allows City to get caught out in quick transition. It’s fair to give the players some time as this is a new system that again changes the angles of the way they play. That change in angles created some of the sloppy play and passing we saw from City in the past two games.
That is a real concern heading into this Manchester Derby. City were hit twice by quick and decisive counters in their last matchup with Manchester United. The pace of Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial, and Daniel James will surely be on display again under the lights at Old Trafford on Tuesday.
Pace in the Manchester Derby
So the obvious next question becomes how is Manchester City’s new formation going to help them deal with that pace? Having three centre-backs does minimize the space that the Manchester United forwards have to run into. However, it also creates more opportunities for City centre-backs to be isolated in defence by Rashford and co.
Pep Guardiola is going to have to go with a trio of Rodrigo, Fernandinho, and Eric Garcia. He simply can’t trust John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi to make the correct decisions in isolation. Guardiola’s starting centre-backs will likely be the two he thinks will make the best decisions in that isolation.
If you think you can predict who those two will be, go and get some lotto numbers. It would be interesting to see if Guardiola will finally play Kyle Walker at centre-back to help with the pace, but it’s hard to follow this team all season and think that that might be a possibility.
Predicting the Game
Even with all those defensive concerns, Manchester City should be able to get on the front foot in this game. United are coming off a poor performance in the FA Cup against Wolverhampton Wanderers. And City, despite all the defensive concerns, still have the most lethal attack in the Premier League.
You could take any combination of City’s attacking players and still build a more dangerous group than United, which is why Manchester City are favourites in this game and should walk out of Old Trafford with a win.
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