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Guardiola’s reaction at the end, with a huge smile on his face, showed signs of a man who was not only proud of the team’s victory but also sensed City are edging back towards their best.
It wasn’t a perfect performance and the scoreline did flatter them, but City need to take the opportunities when Liverpool falter and did so on this occasion.
Guardiola denies he has changed his methods
After City scored, they took a defensive approach unlike one Guardiola has opted for previously.
They sat deep and blocked the centre of the pitch, making it difficult for Arsenal to find striker Viktor Gyokeres or attacking midfielders between the lines. Guardiola has typically asked his team to defend in a 4-4-2 and did to begin with, but City moved into a 5-4-1 or 5-5-0 as the game progressed.
So
They helped Jurgen Klopp mastermind Liverpool’s Champions League and Premier League triumphs and go toe-to-toe with Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in one of the Premier League’s great rivalries.
Now after finishing without a trophy for the first time since 2017, Guardiola has recruited Pepijn Lijnders and James French to his backroom team as part of a rebuild at Etihad Stadium.
Lijnders, who was Klopp’s number two for the second half
During City’s ongoing crisis Guardiola has taken to musing on tactical problems during press conferences, and a few weeks ago he hit on something particularly insightful.
Citing Bournemouth and Brighton, he said: “Today, modern football is not positional. You have to ride the rhythm.”
As the forefather of ‘juego de posicion’, the ‘positional play’ that has dominated world football since his Barcelona side won everything 15 years ago, this is
The rise in anterior cruciate ligament injuries in the Premier League this season is linked to players competing in more games, says Pep Guardiola’s trusted knee surgeon Dr Ramon Cugat.
This month, Manchester United defender Lisandro Martinez became the 10th top-flight player to injure his ACL this season.
That is the most there has been since 2016-17, when there were 12 in the whole season. There were nine during the
Rogers doubled Villa’s lead with a smart low finish, having given the City defence the slip in the first half before speeding clear and unselfishly feeding Jhon Duran to open the scoring.
This was the first-ever Premier League game in which Rogers has both scored and assisted. It was his fourth strike of the season, and his eighth in 28 league matches for Villa.
Those are not prolific numbers, but
Manchester City’s iffy spell of form has extended to one win, the 3-0 victory over Forest on Wednesday, in nine matches – a run going back to the end of October.
There was plenty to be concerned about here.
Kyle Walker was found wanting for both Palace goals. He kept Munoz onside for the first and was beaten far too easily in the air by Lacroix for the second.
Stefan
In his programme notes, Guardiola said it was his job to find solutions to his side’s present plight and ominously added: “And I will.”
That calls for bold and radical thinking.
In addition to restoring De Bruyne to his starting line-up, Guardiola made a couple of other decisions that turned out to be quite significant.
Firstly, he plonked Jack Grealish into a central spot alongside the Belgian, which allowed him