BIRMINGHAM, England — Pep Guardiola has never been in a situation like this before. You can say it. In 16 years of top management, Guardiola won more trophies than he could count, took great talents to heights they could not even imagine and set the template for modern coaching. And as the man at the bar or in the comments will keep telling you, he’s done it all at the helm of some of the richest clubs on the planet, where he doesn’t need anything.
No wonder he never found himself in these circumstances, a return of points since the start of November that put City neck and neck with Southampton. Villa Park was bristling with expectations before kick-off. Perhaps the home fans were convinced of the exhilarating triumph in the same match last year, but Villa have not been a team at that level in recent weeks. More to the point, City didn’t even live up to one of their worst performances from last season.
That belief would only grow when Villa saw the City XI. A team that looked incapable of opening Manchester United last weekend had given up on Kevin De Bruyne. Facing an opponent who likes nothing more than forcing direct transition moves against the opposition’s high lines, City were deprived of the recovery pace of Kyle Walker. No Ruben Dias either, a muscle injury which sidelined him for the holidays, nor Ederson.
So Guardiola’s hands were somewhat tied, albeit to an extent that most managers would expect at this stage of the season. Still, it’s fair to say he exacerbated the situation. By leaving Savinho and Jeremy Doku on the bench, Guardiola gave himself a front line whose first instinct was to move inside the pitch, head first, in the much larger, more burgundy and blue shirts. strong and more mobile which filled the heart of the field. Savinho’s introduction before the close certainly gave City something different, a direct run wide that forced space, enough for Phil Foden to rush in to score his first Premier League goal of the season, too late to offer anything but foolish hope in a 2-1. a defeat that could have been much worse.
At the heart of the melee, Ilkay Gundogan and Mateo Kovacic had nothing to escape the attentions of Youri Tielemans, not to mention Amadaou Onana and Boubacar Kamara. They couldn’t even patrol the spaces in front of the back line. John Stones felt he had no choice but to steal through midfield when a simple pass from Emiliano Martinez found Tielemans space to advance. One more ball and what remained of the City line were out of play, Morgan Rogers slipping the ball past Stefan Ortega for Jhon Duran to open the scoring.
Guardiola would tell you it was less that City got it wrong than that Villa got it right, acknowledging that Stones had been late to get to Tielemans but praising the precision with which they crossed City’s line from from there.
“In the middle of the block they are so strong,” Guardiola added. “We had good moments, we had chances, more chances than in the (Manchester) United game, but in the second half we fell down and our pressing wasn’t good enough.
“We struggled a bit and couldn’t let them go well. We finally found a goal, but too late. We struggled to score and we conceded goals.”
Many teams seem to be right against City at the moment. When a problem in your camp continues to be highlighted, the coach must make adjustments. That opener was perhaps only the third or fourth of a dozen moments, beginning in the 16th second, when City’s high line had been demolished by Villa. Of course, adjusting to life without Rodri is easier said than done, whose case for winning the Ballon d’Or in absentia is already becoming more and more compelling.
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A Mateo Kovacic, obviously far from being fully fit, won’t really be a replacement, nor will everything that Ilkay Gundogan has left in the tank. Romeo Lavia might have been, but the best of City’s very impressive academy are now uprooting trees elsewhere, notably Rogers, whose dynamism and composure in the final third would contribute greatly to this team. It would be one thing if the fruits of academy sales were intended to deepen a team that has been split to the bone because that’s the way Guardiola liked it, at least until this week when he admitted he may need 25 players to manage multiple teams. competitions. It might have been helpful if someone at City had come to this conclusion in the summer of 2023.
Either way, there are ways to help your high line other than getting Rodri or signing a replacement more immediately. Kyle Walker may have struggled but he’s supposed to be City’s bottom line, the one whose burst is supposed to get his teammates out of trouble when their press is broken. He didn’t offer much in the second half, replacing John Stones after his foot problem resurfaced, suggesting this game might have been different had he started. But nonetheless, a defender with real recovery pace was another thing Guardiola chose to deprive himself of in a match where his defense would obviously need it.
Guardiola himself was unimpressed with the second half, making vague allusions to changes being made to accommodate “our captain” Walker. But again, you can ask the manager questions. John McGinn enjoyed 45 minutes of the ball against Josko Gvardiol. He seemed to have even more joy against the reversal Rico Lewis. Couldn’t Walker have moved to central defense, where he has played quite frequently lately, to avoid exacerbating an already apparent problem?
Even at the peak of his powers, Guardiola never hesitated to make adjustments that hampered his team. What was he trying today? The logical answer would be that you introduce Lewis and Jack Grealish for Walker and Doku because you want to be in control. City certainly had plenty of the ball in the first half, but no one would mistake it for dominance. Within 20 minutes their attacking plans had turned into long balls towards Grealish in the hope that he would recapture some of that old Villa Park magic, beat three guys and score a wonder goal.
Guardiola’s City had many looks: the team of flying wingers and cutbacks, constant possession that forced errors, maintaining a team that had all sorts of ways to channel the ball into pure goal-scoring greatness. ‘Erling Haaland. Rarely have they allowed themselves to depend so much on the fortunes of a winger, no matter how impressed his manager said he was with Grealish and the wider first-half performance.
As for Haaland, he was not at all seduced by his own demonstration. “I didn’t do things well enough,” City’s number 9 said after another match where his shots were brilliant and you’ll miss it. “I didn’t manage to score my chances. I have to do better, I wasn’t good enough.”
Haaland is wrong, as Guardiola himself noted. He didn’t score his chances because he didn’t get them. A header in the 90th minute was all that happened to him. Despite all the problems with Rodri’s absence and the disappearance of Kevin De Bruyne, City still have the best pure striker in the game. The ball isn’t coming towards him. A player who regularly averages more than four shots per 90 minutes hasn’t even reached half that figure this month.
When asked why Stones came off at half-time – a recurrence of the foot injury he suffered recently – Guardiola struggled to answer that he was trying to simplify. “I would say I’m not at the right time to make tactical and creative changes.” Take his word for it, but the solutions he deployed at Villa Park made things easier for Villa, not City.
Things will probably work out well for Guardiola, not least because for all the joy of those chants of “you’ll be sacked in the morning”, he will have the time that few, if any, managers need to collect numbers and figure things out. new options. Make no mistake, though, if a manager without such a history were in Guardiola’s shoes, he would know that he can’t get away with much more damage like the one City did this afternoon.
