It was late summer when Pep Guardiola seemed to go beyond the point of parody. Bayern Munich’s manager, the apostle of passing football, picked a team without centre-backs. It was, admittedly, partly a product of injuries and suspensions but Guardiola fielded a defence comprised entirely of full-backs with the skill sets of midfielders.
In another game, Xabi Alonso was used as a sweeper, a 21st-century Franz Beckenbauer as he strolled around at the back, spraying passes while utterly unworried that, slow and never noted for his aerial ability, he lacks two of the usual requirements for a centre-back.
On Saturday, Guardiola's future employers, Manchester City, provided a variant on a theme. They played without effective centre-backs.
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Nicolas Otamendi and Martin Demichelis endured harrowing afternoons, run ragged by Leicester City’s indefatigable attackers Jamie Vardy and Shinji Okazaki.
Demichelis was partly culpable for both of Robert Huth’s goals. Both Manchester City men suffered in comparison with Leicester’s altogether more solid central defenders, Huth and Wes Morgan.
They were acquired for a combined sum of £4 million (Dh21.3m). City, in contrast, have the two most expensive centre-backs ever bought by English clubs, in the £31.5 million Otamendi and the £42 million Eliaquim Mangala. The Frenchman is injured at the moment but this season has only served to underline City’s reliance on Vincent Kompany.
They have conceded a solitary league goal in the eight league games their captain has started and even that, scored by Norwich City’s Cameron Jerome, came courtesy of an uncharacteristic goalkeeping error from Joe Hart.
Minus Kompany, City have been breached 25 times in 17 games. They have conceded four apiece to Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool, three to Leicester, two in both meetings with West Ham United and in defeats to Stoke City and Arsenal. They are the games that, with a return of one point from 21, threaten to deny City the title. Chaos comes at a cost.
Rewind to August and Manuel Pellegrini, often vague when it comes to numbers, was being unusually precise.
“I think a team that wants to win a title must concede 30 or 31 goals, not more,” the Chilean said. By their manager’s own estimation, City can afford to let in a maximum of five in their remaining 13 fixtures. By any standards, their plans are going awry.
Pellegrini believes Otamendi was the best defender in Spain’s La Liga last season. He will not secure the same distinction in the Premier League. He has excelled at times, but been erratic at others. He seems to play on his own, rather than as part of a unit.
The cumbersome Mangala may be an easy target but since the beginning of the season alongside Kompany in a back four that kept five successive clean sheets, he has reverted to being unreliable. There is an undercurrent of uncertainty in his play.
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Demichelis is a particular favourite of Pellegrini’s, but a man with lesser self-belief than the Argentine would have retired during Saturday’s torment. He is too slow now. The evidence is that he should have walked away last summer and that City should have promoted the youngster Jason Denayer rather than loaning him to Galatasaray.
Yet the issues are both individual and structural. They always have been during Pellegrini’s reign. A commitment to attack is admirable, but it has to be married with tactical discipline and organisation. The Chilean chose his most adventurous full-backs, Aleksandar Kolarov and Pablo Zabaleta, on Saturday. Both went forward at the same time, leaving space either side of the exposed centre-backs. He devised a system that suited Vardy perfectly. City were liable to be counter-attacked. Leicester ripped them apart.
The sense was always that Guardiola, with his fondness for footballing central defenders, coaching prowess and tactical ingenuity, would bring change at the back. After all, he is the man who played Yaya Toure as a centre-half in a Uefa Champions League final.
That all four regular full-backs are in their thirties increases the probability of an overhaul. Yet it is being necessitated.
Guardiola’s Bayern reached such an elevated level they could win without a centre-back. City are their opposites, spending £74 million on them in the last 18 months and still proving desperately dependent on Kompany.
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