A bunker mentality is not enough to unsettle champions: there must be a threat from players carrying the ball in wide areas
? It’s a question football has been trying and largely failing to answer for six years. The two best options seem to be to wait for some traumatic external event to disrupt the season and scramble everybody’s minds, or hope that Pep Guardiola becomes so obsessed by the possibility of being counterattacked that he does something eccentric with his formation . Or you could just wait for Rodri to be unavailable.that saw them eliminated from last season’s Carabao Cup).
Pep Guardiola at Wembley during the Community Shield, in which Arsenal turned the tables after three defeats last season to win on penalties.Going into the bunker, though, is not enough: there must also be an attacking threat, ideally initiated by somebody who can carry the ball in wide areas. Pedro Neto’s runs advanced the ball an astonishing 215 metres last Saturday, Dejan Kulusevski’s 130m when Spurs beat City last February and Rico Henry’s 112m inon New Year’s Eve last year.
happen to an extent at Molineux where City looked unusually short of imagination, perhaps missing the creativity of Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva and the purposefulness of Rodri, while Jack Grealish was a second-half substitute. Grealish and Jérémy Doku, like Riyad Mahrez, are skilful and direct wide forwards whose dribbling ability makes it harder for teams to hold City at arm’s length. At the same time, Erling Haaland is a complete centre-forward, decent in the air and capable, when the mood is with him, of battering shots in from almost anywhere. But he is probably at his best chasing balls played in behind the opposing defensive line, which demands earlier passes and a more direct style of play.
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