Danny Higginbotham: Pep Guardiola is making Manchester City stars into better players with merry-go-round approach to their positions
Etihad boss has a history of moving players to new positions – Javier Mascherano at Barcelona, Philipp Lahm at Bayern
ONE of the most interesting things about Manchester City’s demolition of Palace was the flexibility of Pep Guardiola’s team.
When centre-back John Stones went off, the manager moved Kyle Walker to the middle, made Danilo swap to right-back and bought on Fabian Delph to play left-back!
That shows me that Guardiola wants to challenge his players to think about other roles and wants to make them comfortable across the park.
And they looked good too which suggests they do it in training.
Guardiola has a history of moving players to new positions – Javier Mascherano at Barcelona, Philipp Lahm at Bayern Munich for example.
Could we see that at the Etihad? I wouldn’t bet against it.
TERRIER FIRMA
Huddersfield have kept a very impressive four clean sheets in their six league matches.
And it is down to being well drilled and working together as a unit.
David Wagner did his transfer business early in the window and is now reaping the rewards of having had time to work with his players.
But what they haven’t done is change their style or the core of the side and that is paying off – as it is for all three promoted sides in fact.
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SHOT-SHY SAINTS
Southampton are in terrible trouble in front of goal at home having failed to score in eight of nine games at St Mary’s going back to last season too.
What’s odd is they have changed manager yet the same problem persists.
The expectation is on you to make the running at home – so the new manager really needs to find the solution - and quickly.
SILVA POLISH
Fair play to Watford who have won all three of their away games this season adding the scalp of Swansea on Saturday.
It is a great effort. And the reason is because they are very good at changing defence into attack quickly.
Boss Marco Silva has been brilliant in a short space of time and has made his new signings gel.
The reaction to losing heavily against City was brilliant.
City are going to wallop teams so to move on and win at Swansea was a fine effort.
HELL-HURST PARK
It’s fair to say things don’t look too good down at Selhurst Park. Six games, six losses, no goals is not pretty.
And they are about to lose key players too as they prepare for their next two fixtures – none other than Manchester United and Chelsea.
Christian Benteke has picked up a knock and we wait to see how bad that is plus Tim Fosu-Mensah can’t play against United as it’s his parent club and the same for goes for Ruben Loftus-Cheek in the Chelsea match.
It could get worse before it gets better.
