Pep Guardiola’s arrival seems to have brought a new lease of life to Manchester City. There’s an apparent freshness about the club’s playing style which can be sensed so easily. Manchester United have done well so far under Jose Mourinho. Antonio Conte’s Chelsea have won three on three. But if there’s some sort of thrill in the Premier League right now, then that’s largely due to Guardiola’s transformation of City in a creative, exciting and step-by-step fashion.
In his very first game in charge of Manchester City, we saw Guardiola deploy his wingbacks in the central midfield region, more central than Philipp Lahm and David Alaba in Bayern Munich, and thus effectively converting them to inverted fullbacks.
Guardiola’s team has dominated the ball against all the opponents and has averaged 67% possession in the first three games in the league. In these three games, Manchester City has completed an average of 587 passes and the pass completion stands at a whopping 85%.
Clearly, these are some of the basic elements that draw a thick line and show the disparity in the playing styles of Manuel Pellegrini and Guardiola.
Stopping at this point and just praising the Catalan coach’s recent success doesn’t make justice to what Guardiola is doing to his squad to be a “fully functional Pep Guardiola team”. In order to dwell deeper into this matter, I will be discussing Manchester City’s counter-pressing under Pep Guardiola.
Counter-pressing is the method of applying pressure on the opposition as soon as the ball is lost. The aim is to win the ball back quickly or force the opposition to negative transition. The whole idea of counter-pressing is to prevent the opposition from making counter-attacks.
Counter-pressing has been one of the core elements of Guardiola’s past teams. Teams in Bundesliga, for example, Roger Schmidt’s Bayer Leverkusen, adopt this element into their playing styles.
Counter-pressing is preceded by possession loss which makes the opponents move into the transition phase from defense to attack and thus deep defending teams usually lose their shape and compactness when counter-pressed. When the ball is won in such circumstances, the counter-pressing team can find itself facing the opposition that has open spaces between the lines – which the counter-pressing team can take good advantage of.
For a possession based team, counter-pressing is an essential mechanism to stop teams from counter-attacking. Facing a reactive opponent defending with a low block, it becomes very crucial for any possession based team to counter-press. Else, the opposition will have space behind the defensive line to attack and with the use of some pacey forwards can wreak havoc.
It is not just the breakdown of the low block or compactly defending teams that is important but also defending against counter-attacks. Manchester City is doing just that! Guardiola’s side in Manchester has undergone quick transformation and was seen counter-pressing Sunderland in the middle third to win back possession and restart attacks.
How do we know that Manchester City is counter-pressing? What are time gaps between possession loss and recovery?
Well, the first and foremost distinctive factor about counter-pressing is the instantaneous response of the possession based team, here Manchester City, to losing the ball. Some teams play with retreat defence. Such teams rarely press quickly after losing ball possession and focus on just falling back to guard the zones in front of the 18-yard box.
Manchester City, on the other hand, is quick to respond to losing ball possession. But there should be a quantifiable value so as to back my saying. I have assumed that since City players counter-press, they should be able to win the ball back within nine seconds of losing it to the opposition. The usual value taken into account by the football stats experts is seven seconds. But since counter-pressing is new to City players and it still takes some time to perfect it, I have just extended the ball recovery time by two seconds.
So I started collecting data from the first three Premier League games under Guardiola. Note that since all the time interval measurements have been done manually, my data is not perfectly accurate. A noise-free data set obtained from companies like Opta might vary from my data set. But the data collected by me is more than sufficient to establish the fact that Manchester City counter-press under Guardiola and to quantify it.
I noted the time interval between losing the ball and recovering it back by counter-pressing and also plotted the point of ball recovery on a pitch tracker for Sunderland and West Ham games. Since more than one player commits to counter-press after losing the ball and also since it is the ball recovery that matters, I have just plotted ball recovery points.
Against Sunderland, City made 16 counter-pressing actions after which the players recovered the ball back to attack again. The mean ball recovery time was four seconds. Against Stoke City, there was an increase in the number of counter-pressing actions as City players recovered the ball 22 times and had a mean recovery time of 4.41 seconds. Versus West Ham, the mean time for ball recovery was five seconds and the ball was won back 14 times.
These numbers mean nothing unless they are compared to similar data collected from Manchester City’s games under Pellegrini. I picked City’s game against Everton last season and carried a similar analysis on the first half performance of the Citizens. City recovered the ball only seven times by pressing. Of the seven ball recovery actions, only three times did they manage to get the ball back within nine seconds. The mean recovery time was 27.86 seconds.
This shows how passive Manchester City was in the “no ball possession” phase under the Chilean. Under Guardiola, the players are very much active and are keen to force the opponents to make wrong decisions and concede the possession back to City.
Compared to Red Bull Salzburg under Roger Schmidt, these numbers fall short by miles. Schmidt’s team outperformed Guardiola’s Bayern Munich in a friendly game when they scored three goals in the first half itself thanks to relentless pressing. This involved 21 times ball possession recovery by counter-pressing in the first 45 minutes itself! The mean time for ball recovery was 4.67 seconds, which shows how consistent the players were while counter-pressing.
But from the perspective of ineffectively pressing Premier League clubs, this is a huge leap which puts City one level above Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham and in the same bracket as Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
Where on the pitch do Manchester City players usually recover the ball after counter-pressing?
While counter-pressing under Guardiola involves a lot of ball winning in the attacking half, it doesn’t mean teams don’t counter-press in the defensive half of the pitch - since possession loss triggers counter-pressing and teams can lose the ball while attack build-ups from the back. But since possession losses are more while attacking in the final third and the regions close to it, we see few ball recoveries in the defensive half of the field than in the attacking half.
Of the 16 ball recovery points against Sunderland, 11 were in the attacking half, 4 in the attacking third. Against Sunderland, with the inverted fullbacks – Gael Clichy and Bacary Sagna positioning centrally, City was able to cut short Sunderland’s attacking threats during breaks through the centre.
Of the 14 ball recovery points against West Ham, 12 were in the attacking half and 2 in the attacking third.
Against West Ham, since the inverted fullbacks were positioning the half-spaces and were also seen supporting the wingers out wide, City was recovering the ball very much on the wings. City was banking on overcoming favourable 1v1 situations on the wings first in order to move centrally. Read the analysis here.
Both matches combined, there were 20 ball recovery points in the middle third. Ball recovery points close to the 18-yard box can be very lethal due to proximity to goal.
Last season, City was attempting 16 shots on an average every game and 9 shots were being conceded. This season, City is averaging 17 shots every game and conceding one less than last season’s average. While the increment may not look like something that can wind up big changes, in the long run, it can make an impact.
Shot count only accounts partly in the expected goal model. Expected game model gives an idea about the chances of a shot ending up as a goal. The position of the shot, the type of assist and the game scenario make crucial contributions as well. When Manchester City counter-press and win the ball, they find themselves facing the opponents with a disjointed shape due to the movement of opponents in the transition phase.
Thus playing through balls becomes easy. After winning the ball around the higher middle third, City’s forwards find relatively more space and time on the ball compared to a deep defending team. All these help the players in taking better quality shots.
Last’s season Manchester City’s expected goal difference per game was 0.64. The actual goal difference per game was 0.79. That is, they were just scraping through most of the games last season – late wins against teams like Crystal Palace and Everton, poor performances against Top 6 teams in the league. City’s big wins, due to which many people were thinking that Pellegrini’s team was really good, were only against teams close to the relegation zone.
Under Guardiola, Manchester City's expected goal difference per game is 1.2 – which is quite good. The actual goal difference per game is 2. City is out-performing the model! The team is creating more chances and conceding less chances – mainly due to the ability to win the ball back as soon as losing it and surprise the defending team.
To get a really contrasting picture we can compare the expected goal charts for different games under Pellegrini and Guardiola. Take, for example, City’s last season’s game against Southampton and Arsenal, and this season’s game against West Ham.
Against Southampton and Arsenal, last season, City conceded scoring chances in the danger zone (the region around the penalty spot) – which indicates how easy it was for the opposition teams to breach through City’s defensive shape.
In the last game against West Ham, City was very different. Their pressing after losing the ball lead to ball possession recovery and gave the team many chances to have shots. Also, pressing in the central regions and a compact defensive shape denied Slaven Bilic's team the opportunity to enter the danger zone. There were three shots from West Ham in this region and probably all of them were from headers.
The contrast between the quality of the chances conceded and created last season and this season, speaks volumes about Guardiola's methods. Counter-pressing helps in thwarting attacks that otherwise could've ended up as shots. It also helps in attacking quickly and increasing City's chances of having more and better quality shots on target.
How do Manchester City’s players counter-press? What is their positioning prior to counter-pressing?
For counter-pressing effectively, there are a few pre-requisites. First of all, the players should be trained in a way such that the drills resemble in-game situations. Guardiola’s positional play exercises like rondos and 4v4+3 positional drill and mini games such as 7v7+1 prepare the players physically and mentally to perform similar intricate passing and intense pressing actions during games.
Also, for counter-pressing to be successful there is a need for the existence of a fluidic playing style with a suitable structure that facilitates player movements. It is not enough if every single player moves ahead of the ball or players keep changing or swapping their positions without any particular aim.
For Guardiola, the aim is to move the opponents out of their positions and create openings. But not just that, the Catalan manager needs his players to move in a synchronized fashion within the attacking structure. His aim is always to be one step ahead of the opponents. So he requires his players to balance each other’s movements, be positionally dynamic and create a flexible style, not for just namesake.
If David Silva moves outward towards the ball, then Sergio Aguero should drop to the #10 space and Nolito should move inwards. So when Silva draws out a couple of players from their position due to his movement to the wing, he can find Aguero free in the nearby half-space.
This not just presents advantages during attacking but also provides an upper hand to Guardiola’s team. Since in his flexible playing shape there are many lines, it allows players to cover for each other and counter-press if the ball is lost. Due to the many lines of formation and not more than one player occupying the horizontal lines, rhombuses, and triangles are created within the structure.
Not only do these triangles and rhombuses help in pressing resistance, ball circulation and penetration of play, they also help in immediately pressing the opponents by creating overloads near the ball. The interlinked shape facilitates effective pressing and also gives connections to different parts of the field when the ball is won back.
Many teams that try to replicate Guardiola’s style create nearly similar shapes in attacking phase but they lack the elements of positional play such as balancing movements and counter-pressing that make Guardiola’s teams so good. Everton under Roberto Martinez was known for its attacking style but defensively that team was in shambles.
Guardiola, at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, used passing-lane oriented counter-pressing. In this type of counter-pressing, the players try to block the passing lanes of the ball carrying opponent and force him to make a wrong pass or give away the ball possession.
In a counter-pressing scenario from Bayern’s game against Juventus last season. The players, immediately after losing the ball, put pressure on the ball carrier by removing his passing options and leave him with no option but to pass long.
In Manchester, things are very much similar. The only difference is that by the third year, Bayern Munich was completely used to Guardiola’s style and City still has a long way to go. When perfected, City can really be more aggressive in the transition phases.
Here’s a scenario from the West Ham game in which Manchester City players forced Mark Noble from passing centrally and losing the ball to Fernandinho who quickly passed it to Silva.
Noble had only one opening and that was towards the central region – a pass to the other central midfielder. In this situation, although the City players are not entirely covering every passing option correctly, City forced West Ham from making a positive transition. John Stones and Nicholas Otamendi are moving closer in the direction of the ball in order to make the space around the ball compact.
While losing the ball in the wings and when the chances of pressing successfully in the wings is not possible, City players try to force the ball towards the centre and thus lure the opponents into a pressing trap. Against Stoke City, after losing the ball since the backline of Stoke City was distorted, City took advantage to lure Stoke players into a pressing trap.
De Bruyne forced one of the centre-backs to pass centrally to his partner. Five players converged from the sides by blocking the passing options of the ball carrier and create central overload and encapsulating one opponent around them. This was possible because of the understanding of the game situation by City players and the lack of central presence by Stoke City.
In the same game, when Stoke City did manage to get players in the central spaces, Manchester City managed to block the short passing options by staying compact. Counter-pressing is done to pressurise the regions around the ball carrier, which is better than closing down the passing lanes and forcing errors.
It is all about making the space compact. In the image below, while Jesus Navas, Aguero and de Bruyne are blocking the passing lanes, Fernandinho and Sterling are maintaining pressure in the space close to the ball forming another line of press.
A point to be noted here is, since Manchester City players train using drills that are similar to game relatable conditions they get used to both passing under high pressure and counter-pressing after losing the ball. The players of the other teams who rarely do positional drills with counter-pressing find it hard to get adjusted to City’s high-intensity pressing and this alters their decision-making process. Without prior practice, a new experience such as this can make the opponents commit errors.
What next?
Manchester City players counter-press. They try to cover the passing lanes as soon as losing the ball. Sometimes they even try to overload spaces where the opponents have short passing options. But there is more to come.
Manchester City players are on a learning curve. They will improve as the season progresses. We might see Guardiola bring in some changes to the way Manchester City counter-presses. A change that could tweak his system so as to better fit the conditions of Premier League.
