Manchester City’s weekend defeat against Liverpool was a low moment in the season, we were outplayed, outdone and simply outclassed by a pretty underwhelming Liverpool team. Jurgen Klopp’s tactics were good, but we should have expected them, his teams always press with high intensity and try to clog the middle of the pitch to harm build up play. It was almost as if Pellegrini hadn’t prepared the team properly for the game, his general philosophy is always ‘If we play our way we will win’- but this is really naive from the Chilean.
City in general don’t play a high tempo game, the build up is slow and the passing patterns are simple. There is nothing wrong with this, but Liverpool knew we were slow so exploited it from minute one. Yaya Toure was the main culprit, he was absolutely useless in the first half and made bad pass after bad pass whilst being pressed by the energetic trio of Roberto Firmino, Emre Can and Philippe Coutinho. Sure there was a large element of people wearing red shirts being good, but City shot themselves in the foot.
The best way to play against a high pressing team is to keep the ball on the flanks for as long as possible, Wolfsburg mastered their approach against Klopp’s tactics in last years German Cup final when they dismantled them 4-0. City kept the ball between the centre-backs and the centre-midfielders early on which totally played into Liverpool’s hands, we made it too easy for their one-dimensional style of play.
Above demonstrates just how easy it was, this all started from City just not moving the ball quickly enough and Liverpool players were essentially invited forwards to press. The result of this was an awful pass from Mangala which put Demichelis in trouble, the ball needs to be cleared out wide to tire Liverpool out and leave City with an advantage up the pitch. Gegenpressing is all about being narrow and covering the areas of the pitch widely used by the opposition, in the Blues’ case it is the middle of the pitch.
There has been a lack of ‘urgency’ in a lot of City’s recent games, the performance against Norwich was poor but luckily Otamendi and a moment of madness from John Ruddy managed to bail the team out. This won’t always happen so City really need to up the tempo at times and stop keeping it in the middle of the pitch for long periods of time. Spurs were another team who managed to stop City’s build-up play with ease, it has to change and change fast because teams like Arsenal and Manchester United seem to have less notable issues.
Jesus Navas was the outlet on Saturday, Pellegrini’s decision to start him was about the only key decision he got right on the day. Navas, however, was victim of awful tactics, awful planning and awful decision making by the team both on and off the playing field.
Above courtesy of the FourFourtwo.com match centre is a diagram showing the passes Navas received from other players in his 45-minute cameo. The ball clearly was not being cleared his way and he didn’t receive enough of the ball in the first half. It didn’t take an expert to see that the team were swamped in the centre of the pitch, but Toure and Fernando didn’t do enough to get the ball out wide. Fernando can be excused because his game isn’t playing long passes, but Toure needs to have an inquest into his performance, it was that bad.
The team just can’t match the intensity of teams who press highly, it won’t be that big of a problem in the Premier League but in the later European rounds it could really hurt them. Teams like Bayern and Barca push high up the pitch and deny you time on the ball, guys like Toure and Mangala really can’t play against this sort of style which is a huge problem. It won’t always be a walk in the park, City need to be able to step up to the next level when it is required, it hasn’t happened this year.
A win against Juventus would make things a lot easier on City, it would maybe show that they can match the best teams in Europe for intensity and effort.
