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Pep Guardiola talks tactics with Kyle Walker during Manchester City's game at Chelsea
Pep Guardiola talks tactics with Kyle Walker during Manchester City’s Premier League game at Chelsea. Photograph: Matthew Impey/Rex/Shutterstock
Pep Guardiola talks tactics with Kyle Walker during Manchester City’s Premier League game at Chelsea. Photograph: Matthew Impey/Rex/Shutterstock

Pep Guardiola’s flying full-backs expose Chelsea’s vulnerability

This article is more than 6 years old
Jonathan Wilson
Once a position for the energetic and combative, Manchester City showed it has become one for those who can exploit the space in front of them to shape a game

This is what the Premier League has been waiting for since Pep Guardiola arrived at Manchester City. There had been hints of it before, most notably in the first half of the derby at Old Trafford last season, but City’s performance at Stamford Bridge on Saturday was the first time a Guardiola side in England has so thoroughly dominated another member of the elite from start to finish. All the familiar tropes were there – the domination of possession, the rapid transitions, the tenacity at winning the ball back; all that was missing was the scoreline. This was 1-0 going on 3– or 4-0.

Antonio Conte perhaps saw what was coming. Gone was the familiar 3-4-2-1 and in its place the 3-5-1-1 that had been so effective in beating Atlético Madrid away the previous Wednesday. It was a system designed to sit deep, to absorb pressure and to use the passing of Cesc Fàbregas, protected by Tiémoué Bakayoko to his left and N’Golo Kanté to his right, to strike on the break. That was why, when Álvaro Morata was injured after 35 minutes, it was to Willian rather than Michy Batshuayi that Conte turned: what he needed in forward areas, he reasoned, was pace and discipline. Chelsea had undone City on the counter in both league meetings last season; here, though, the magenta waves just kept coming.

The strength of Chelsea under Conte has always been the spine: the back three protected by two screening players forming a solid base for the two creators to perform upon. At Tottenham Hotspur on the second weekend of the season, he had similarly withdrawn a creator to add an extra body at the back of midfield. On that occasion it was David Luiz; here it was Fàbregas. The difference here was that City attack with much more natural width and were able to apply far more pressure on the flanks.

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Leroy Sané and Raheem Sterling stayed wide and high throughout. No team who play with a back three can ever be entirely comfortably facing opponents who constantly look to exploit the gap behind the wing-backs. Few sides can do that against Chelsea, though, because to sacrifice two players to patrolling the flanks is to risk being overwhelmed in the centre. That naturally forced Marcos Alonso and César Azpilicueta to restrict their forward sallies; that Azpilicueta was preferred to Victor Moses on the right suggested that Conte had foreseen the problem and, looking to avoid the sort of difficulties Burnley’s Robbie Brady had caused in that area, wanted a more defensive presence there.

However, with the wing-backs sitting deep City’s full-backs, who are naturally attacking, were allowed to surge forward almost unchecked. Rather than overlapping, though, Kyle Walker and Fabian Delph kept coming inside their wide man. This is an increasing trend among attacking full-backs – Dani Alves, for instance, did it to great effect for Juventus against Monaco in the Champions League last season – and reflects the growing importance of the position. With a handful of notable exceptions, full-back was once a position for the energetic and the combative but – fulfilling the prophecy Jack Charlton made at the 1994 World Cup – they have become, particularly when burdened with as few defensive responsibilities as City’s were on Saturday, players who can exploit the space that often appears in front of them to shape a game.

The effect of those underlapping runs, particularly in the first half, was to probe at the seam between Chelsea’s wing-backs and their wide central defenders. That creates a huge problem for the defending team: if Alonso picks up Sterling and Bakayoko is dealing with Kevin De Bruyne, it can leave Gary Cahill facing a charging Walker, trying to combat a player who has already had tens of yards of acceleration room. There were times when Antonio Rüdiger would go to Sané and Azpilicueta would switch to pick up Delph but it was an issue with which Chelsea never seemed entirely comfortable.

It was through that area of the pitch that the breakthrough eventually came. De Bruyne worked himself behind Bakayoko, who was perhaps wearied by being dragged about so much and was substituted soon after, which allowed him to get a run at and – after Gabriel Jesus had laid the ball off to him – behind Cahill, a rapid transition that took the ball from the centre circle to the back of the net in three passes.

That could have repercussions. Not only were City excellent but a vulnerability in Chelsea’s back three has been exposed: hit the join between the wide central defenders and the wing-backs and they can be got at.

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