Pep Guardiola does not have a hairdryer setting and prefers not to excoriate his players for individual mistakes. So while others might point the finger at John Stones for a careless back pass against Southampton or Kelechi Iheanacho for not being alert enough to make more of the only couple of chances created against Manchester United, the Manchester City manager accepts collective responsibility for six games without a win and travels to West Bromwich Albion on Saturday looking to find ways in which the team can put things right.
It cannot be easy facing a Tony Pulis team for the first time in the knowledge that the next task on the training-room drawing board will be how to beat Barcelona three days later but that is Premier League life and Guardiola is doing his best to embrace it. “I know how strong West Brom are. We will have to pay attention but I don’t think extra work on set pieces is called for because all the Premier League teams are strong at set pieces,” he said.
“I think we are defending quite well. Look at the last game against United – they are stronger and taller than us with Ibrahimovic, Pogba, Rashford but we defended against set pieces and high balls without too many problems.”
Guardiola believes his side are performing well enough, at least when he puts out his strongest lineup, but have been dropping points through what he terms problems in both penalty areas. “We have to be more safe in the boxes,” he said.
Slips and misplaced passes, not to mention Claudio Bravo’s calamitous goalkeeping, helped Barcelona run out easy winners at the Camp Nou while Stones’s error in the last Premier League game put City on the back foot when they were already feeling the effects of having played with 10 men in Spain.
At the other end City have not been quite as clinical as they were at the start of the season. Part of the reason for that may be Guardiola’s decision to use Sergio Agüero more sparingly, not just at the Camp Nou but in the previous game against Everton. But there is also a concern that for all their domination of most domestic games City are not creating a great deal of clear-cut chances. That was certainly the case in the league games against Everton and Southampton while in the League Cup defeat at Old Trafford the visitors could not manage a single attempt on target.
“It is often our last ball or the final action of the striker,” Guardiola said. “We need to make better decisions in or near the opponents’ box. Against United we had chances but the last pass was not correct. But until United scored we had been the side more close to the goal. Five or six times we were clear yet David de Gea did not have to make a save. We were there but we didn’t finish but until Mata’s goal we were there more than them.”
While that is broadly true, in that City held the ball in more advanced areas than United for most of the game, Guardiola must have heard about counterattacking teams before. Everton pinched a point from the Etihad Stadium by taking the lead against the run of play in what was nearly a classic smash-and-grab raid, and City can expect West Brom to play in a similar manner even though they are at home. The condensed version of what happened at Old Trafford is simply that without David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne City lacked the cleverness and quickness of thought to take advantage of forward positions.
Guardiola likes to send out his sides to pass his opponents to death in the Barcelona fashion, not necessarily by keeping the ball for minutes on end but by precise distribution, intelligent movement and the ability to capitalise on an opening when one comes along. Barcelona still do that almost to perfection. They took a first-half lead at the Camp Nou even as commentators were agreeing they were a long way below their best.
No one really expects City to match that standard, certainly not in Guardiola’s first season, and though it might be unwise to read too much into a League Cup exit brought about by fielding a team largely of reserves, setting a new low for attempts on target tells its own story about how much the creative influence of Silva and De Bruyne was missed. “In the end the difference between the big clubs is how they are in the boxes,” Guardiola said.
“If you are strong in the box you don’t need too many chances to score goals. At the moment we have a problem with that final period and we have to improve.”
In Agüero City possess a striker who is strong in the box and does not need too many chances to score goals. Leaving aside the issue of whether Guardiola was right to leave him out against Barcelona, it will be interesting to see what measures can be taken to improve the strike rate. Agüero is on his own, after all.
Barcelona have Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar. Guardiola tends not to play Iheanacho alongside Agüero and recent outings have suggested the Nigerian is still learning his trade anyway. City have no real striking backup, at least not until Gabriel Jesus arrives from Brazil in December. At that point the City front line may begin to resemble Barcelona’s more closely but until then the nearest thing to a secondary striker is Raheem Sterling.
While Agüero is as reliable a striker as any to have on one’s side in a tough spot, keeping City challenging for the main prizes over the next couple of months is going to take goals from midfield.
