Explaining Manuel Pellegrini's tactics and the future of Manchester City

As Pellegrini moved on to Malaga, he brought about a change in his own tactics. As he himself says, he is always willing to adapt, but not to an extreme. Here’s a look on a few changes he made to his Malaga side:

Now is when he actually send signals to others that he’s finally admitted that he plays a 4-2-2-2.

The most important role fell on the interiores once again, in this case Cazorla and later Isco, once took up the position. The central midfielders now moved out wide, along with the full-backs and the forwards to provide each other support. This helped the players form little triangles to pass the ball around quickly and carefully, or in other words tiki taka.

Isco: Pellegrini’s main man at Malaga

The small transparent circles show the area where triangles are more likely to form. Here, I would like to highlight the importance of Santi Cazorla. He did a brilliant job at drifting wide to combine with the full-backs and returning to the center almost immediately to take up the hole behind the strikers.

His loss didn’t affect them much thanks to Isco, who stepped up brilliantly. Versatile players such as these two gave Pellegrini the option of switching tactics in between the game and helped the manager adapt to the situation on his hands. Much of their philosophy however, remained the same as that of Villarreal.

Now, having left Malaga and joined City. It is quite clear that he will take this same philosophy to Manchester. It’s been quite a debate on how he would field the team, with some saying he might make the move towards a 4-3-3, but I can place my bets on two formations that he’ll definitely use. The 4-2-2-2 and the Malaga plan B, 4-2-3-1 .

Here’s a proposed 4-2-2-2:

First thing to clear up is that, all the signings made this season, were by Pellegrini himself. He’s brought in world-class versatile players, which if he could have at his previous clubs, he wouldn’t really be at City.

Manuel Pellegrini’s teams never press or hassle their opponents. When they play the ball, they fall back and defend deep . They retrieve the ball and dominate possession using triangles. Fernandinho should have no problem in fitting into this system as he’s arguably the best at such a role of holding and defending.

The problem that arises here is Yaya Toure, the man who left Barcelona because he was overthrown by Busquets due to a simple reason, defending.

Toure is more attack minded and it would be interesting to see how Pellegrini can control him and make him more defense minded.

I expect Kompany and Nastasic to cement their roles as the favorite center-back pairing cause they are exactly the players Pellegrini likes to work with. One is physical, while the other has a little bit of pace in him and together, they have terrific game-reading capabilities.

On the flanks I can’t see a better pairing than that of Clichy and Zabaleta. They’re more than used to bombarding down the flanks and will now have to do it more often.