From Pep Guardiola's bold attacking line-up backfiring to Mauricio Pochettino's inspired substitutions, Alex Keble analyses the tactical battle between the two managers in one of the GREAT Premier League matches.
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For the second time in six days Chelsea and Pochettino have been swept up in the madness.
On Monday night Ange Postecoglou’s kamikaze high line was behind the carnage, but this time it was Guardiola - of all people - acting against type and embracing the chaos.
See: Chelsea 4-4 Man City: Key stats from an instant classic
“Did you have fun?” That was Guardiola’s closing line at the post-match press conference and the answer, of course, is a resounding, "Yes." This was Premier League football at its furious, messy, full-blooded best.
Never in 882 career games as a manager has Guardiola been involved in a 4-4 draw. He surely never will again, because to do so requires capitulating to end-to-end football. We haven’t seen that from his Manchester City side since his first few duels against Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
A game of this many chances could have gone either way, and it might be tempting to discard tactical analysis on that basis alone, yet there is plenty to be learnt from how Chelsea seized the initiative, lost it, and twice surged back from behind.
The overarching story is of Man City failing to control the match, failing to curb the wildness of Pochettino’s Chelsea or end the mania once they had taken the lead.
From a Chelsea perspective, superb performances from Conor Gallagher, Cole Palmer and Raheem Sterling in particular evoked the best days of Pochettino’s Spurs, hinting at what this hungry young team could do with a bit more time together.
Guardiola’s attacking line-up backfires
The match was unzipped by Guardiola’s surprisingly bold attacking formation, which encouraged Chelsea’s counter-attacks and Man City’s back the other way.
Rodri was picked alone at the base of midfield with Julian Alvarez (No 19) and Bernardo Silva (No 20) roaming higher and close to Erling Haaland (No 9), which left far too much room in the middle of the park to cope with Chelsea’s numbers in that area.
It was an unexpected move to say the least, given that Guardiola should have been prepared for the narrow 4-2-3-1 deployed by Pochettino. In that shape, both Chelsea wingers tuck inside, which on Sunday inevitably put Rodri (No 16) under too much pressure.
The two teams’ “average positions” below illustrate this perfectly. Look at the space all around Rodri, and the extreme narrowness of Chelsea’s shape:
Multiple Chelsea counters were the result of players simply pouring through the gaps around the overworked Rodri, especially when Reece James, spotting where the space was, also ran infield to further swarm the middle of the park with Chelsea bodies.
It led directly to Chelsea’s second goal, as Palmer dipped in from the right to find the room, poking holes in Guardiola’s decision not to field a second midfield anchor (Manuel Akanji was instructed to move up into midfield, but when Chelsea won the ball, he inevitably had to drop into the defensive line).
In this example, Ruben Dias is pulled out towards Palmer, but has to drop back. Notice how much space and how many players Rodri (circled in red) is expected to cover:
It helped the game bounce back-and-forth, with Chelsea having the upper hand for long periods of the match thanks to an excellently enacted press that stopped Man City from gaining the control they would have liked.
Chelsea’s narrow shape sees Foden & Doku star
Unable to tame the contest, or even to build their attacks through the centre of the pitch (thanks to the way Gallagher and Nicolas Jackson blocked that particular path), Man City got a foothold in the game via Jeremy Doku and Phil Foden.
It was a cross from the left wing by Silva, freed by Doku’s distracting presence, which led to the penalty concession for Man City’s first goal, before Doku’s trickery on the left led to the corner from which Man City scored their second.
This was the downside to Chelsea’s narrow 4-2-3-1, because however much they could pour through the middle on the counter, they consistently left too much space on the outside for Man City to attack.
Credit to the champions for adapting their game and focusing on this particular line of attack, and for doing so persistently; the third goal, a quick counter through Foden, was created by Alvarez’s run taking advantage of how narrow Marc Cucurella was.
Pochettino wins battle of the subs
That explains the first hour of a wild back and forth at Stamford Bridge, but the final 30 minutes were all about Man City’s inability to control the game after taking the lead and Pochettino’s clever series of substitutions.
His first double change in the 63rd minute didn’t alter the shape, but it did move Gallagher from the right wing – where he had been playing since half-time, swapping positions with Palmer – into a deep central-midfield role.
From here, Gallagher picked up possession and sprayed a brilliant pass out to the left wing before driving on, collecting it back and hitting a shot that was pushed into the path of Jackson to make the score 3-3.
Man City scored a fourth through a lucky deflection, but then Pochettino made another late change to get Chelsea back into the game: Armando Broja came on and the home side moved to a 4-2-4 formation.
The change, confusing the Man City defenders, was directly responsible for the penalty concession: Jackson’s run dragged the defender away and the second striker, Broja, arrived in the gap, forcing Dias into a desperate lunge.
Guardiola cannot gain control despite leading twice
Pochettino’s subs made a huge difference. Guardiola’s made almost no impact whatsoever.
It is unusual for Man City to let matches become so open and entertaining, and while we have explained how that happened from the outset, that does not justify why Guardiola was unable to adapt his tactics and exert more control.
His first change, Jack Grealish for Doku, was likely an attempt to calm down Man City’s attack a little, using Grealish’s slower dribbling style to stop the play and allow the visitors to settle into their shape in the Chelsea half.
It didn’t do much, and in fact seemed to help Chelsea, with Grealish struggling to understand his defensive duties. Ahead of the penalty concession for Chelsea’s fourth, Guardiola was screaming at Grealish for defending the wrong space, which allowed Sterling to get on the ball and drive into the final third.
Guardiola’s only other change, in the 74th minute, was Mateo Kovacic for Alvarez, which again looked like an attempt to calm things down with some typically-City quiet possession recycling.
However, crucially Kovacic was not told to sit alongside Rodri, but rather remain in that higher No 8 position - meaning Chelsea’s capacity to break quickly was unaffected.
In fact, looking at the image above, note how Kovacic is higher than Rodri (both circled), creating that space for Sterling.
It was a goal that summed up the game: Chelsea restless, urgent and attacking in straight lines; Man City overly committed to the fun.