City need to get back to basics!
Far be it from me to tell the greatest football manager of all time what to do, but in my personal experience, when things aren't working, instead of trying to figure out where the problem is, I find that untangling & reconstructing everything from scratch always reveals where the issues lie & what needs to be done to resolve them.
I've said this before several times, & I'll say it again, City’s current formation & tactics have been figured out, so instead of trying to do things better without Rodri who made it work, we need to strip everything down & go back to basics, which is Pep's famed 4-3-3 with players sticking to the formation.
Until Bernardo's opener, both Lewis & Gvardiol played as full backs, & Everton were pinned back as they had zero space out wide to launch counter-attacks into. Things were developing nicely until the goal, but for whatever reason, Lewis moved back inside & Gvardiol became more advanced, which led to Everton springing counter after counter into the wide spaces vacated by our inverted full backs.
The inverted defender formation worked well when we had the best CDM at our disposal, but we can't keep trying to do the same thing game after game, leaving ourselves vulnerable to individual errors, when we're overrun in defence.
The time is nigh for Baldy to play to our current Rodri-less strengths & rebuild our confidence & form from the defence, forward. We still possess the tools, but we're not utilising them as effectively as we should.
The question going into the second half of the season? Is the perpetually over-thinking Baldy, a man for turning?
