http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/the-game/article4249268.ece?shareToken=19b4e70ac3b009b95eb6aa0f66d2ad00
Manuel Pellegrini needs to adopt tactical tinkering for Manchester City to flourish
It was just over a month ago when Manuel Pellegrini reacted with something approaching scorn to questions about whether the time was coming to push Yaya Touré farther forward as part of a midfield three in order to reduce the amount of defensive work he had to do.
Paul Scholes had become the latest high-profile figure to criticise Touré’s performance in the aftermath of Manchester City’s 1-0 Champions League defeat by Bayern Munich in Germany, the former Manchester United midfielder, claiming the Ivorian’s “lack of defensive work” had become a “major problem”.
Pellegrini was bemused. “I think you saw Yaya play last season – that is his best position,” the City manager said, by way of defence of his continued use of Touré as one of two central midfielders. ”He was the best player in that position last season and you want to change his position?”
Forget for a moment that Touré was at the centre of the debate, the key words here were last season. Just because something worked fine the last campaign does not automatically mean that will still be the case the next but it is a theory that does not appear to hold much sway with Pellegrini.
In the face of growing evidence that the Barclays Premier League champions need a tweak here and there and would at least benefit from a little more flexibility from their manager, the Chilean seems to be sticking doggedly to the tactics and system that delivered the title last time around. That stubbornness may yet pay off, but as a 2-1 defeat away to West Ham United on Saturday exposed more of the same shortcomings, it is hard to make a strong case for it at the moment.
Consider first that City should have waltzed to the championship in each of the past three seasons, with Pellegrini and before him Roberto Mancini at the helm. With one of the strongest squads in Premier League history and only a modest group of rivals challenging them, it was curious to say the least that City made such heavy going of it in 2011-12 and last season, when they were dependent on collapses by Manchester United and Liverpool respectively to scrape over the finishing line in first place on the final day of both campaigns. The season in between those two, 2012-13, when they finished a mammoth 11 points behind a United side that was arguably the most underwhelming of any of Sir Alex Ferguson’s title winners, rightly ranks as a colossal and embarrassing underachievement.
This season, things are different. José Mourinho’s new-look Chelsea are a far more formidable proposition than Liverpool or either of those United teams were. They are unlikely to blow up or make life overly difficult for themselves. They are hard-edged, ruthless. In short, they will and are providing a level of competition higher than City encountered in any of the previous three campaigns, have set a strong early pace at the top and presently boast a six-point advantage over Pellegrini’s team.
What was just about good enough for City before probably won’t be pass muster this term. And this is where Pellegrini’s apparent unwillingness to adapt is hard to fathom and could, ultimately, prove damaging to City’s title defence, let alone their faltering Champions League prospects, which continue to expose even greater flaws in the logic of a manager permanently wedded to a two-man midfield that remains too easy to bypass.
The best coaches move with the times and adapt, recognise weakness or shortcomings and address them. The increased threat posed by Chelsea aside, opponents are becoming wiser when playing against City, not least because their line-up throws up few, if any, surprises. Opposing managers have had more than a year to figure out how Pellegrini works and know it will be the same approach, the same method every time. Time and again he sends out his players in the same fluid 4-4-2 formation and, as such, opponents are rarely kept guessing.
Often, City’s talent wins through but few teams are now being swatted with the effortless swagger evident at times last season and the whole process is becoming more of a grind. As a consequence of their own rigidity, their insistence on the same thing all of the time, have City simply become too predictable? They have won four, drawn four and lost three of their past 11 matches, with the defeat at West Ham the latest fixture in which an opponent has had plenty of joy getting in behind Pellegrini’s open, two-man midfield. Sam Allardyce, the West Ham manager, sees similarities in Pellegrini’s approach to that of Arsène Wenger at Arsenal, another manager with an apparent mistrust of the virtues of a little pragmatism.
“There are two types of coaches,” Allardyce said. “There’s coaches like me who weigh up the opposition and ask the team to adjust. Fergie [Ferguson] was similar. Jose [Mourinho, the Chelsea manager] is similar. Then there’s Arsene, who won’t adjust. There’s Brendan [Rodgers, the Liverpool manager], who looks like he won’t adjust.
“There’s Manuel Pellegrini, who looks like he won’t adjust, even in the Champions League. He seems to favour what he’s got. City are quite open. Their [Wenger/Rodgers/Pellegrini’s] philosophy is different to ours. Ours is more about who we are playing against. Their philosophy is more, ‘We always play this way’ and they won’t change, they carry on doing the same thing. That’s why you can beat them.”
No one is suggesting Pellegrini should abandon his philosophy. His commitment to attacking, entertaining football is a positive, not a negative. No one is suggesting City have deep-rooted problems or require an overhaul. On the contrary, no one – probably not even Chelsea – have two players of the same quality in each position.
Much of the time, Pellegrini’s 4-4-2 is too much for opponents, still wins out. Yet Allardyce’s constructive appraisal picked specific holes in Pellegrini’s approach and it seems puzzling, as his team keep making the same mistakes over and again and the same failings keep rearing their head, that in certain matches the Chilean does not adapt his system. That does not amount to an abandonment of philosophy or his principals. It is simply about being more pragmatic, about maximising the chance to win.
Given his feelings towards Mourinho, Pellegrini would not appreciate the suggestion but a little of the Portuguese’s practicality would not go amiss on occasion. There have been games this season that have screamed out for a three-man midfield to shore up the middle and offer more protection to the defence, not least given the emphasis Pellegrini places on his full-backs to bomb forward and at a time when Eliaquim Mangala is taking his first tentative steps in English football.
In Europe this has been especially true, but whether it is stubbornness, short-sightedness or simply a belief that quality will eventually shine through, Pellegrini seems averse to any sort of tactical tinkering.
Yes, some players are just having poor seasons and the system alone cannot be to blame for that. Touré is the most obvious example but Pablo Zabaleta has been some way short of last season’s standards, Edin Dzeko has been up and down, Gaël Clichy poor at left back, Fernandinho’s relegation to a bit-part role has hampered him and Fernando is struggling with the transition. Even Vincent Kompany has had the occasional jitters. Only David Silva, Sergio Agüero, James Milner and Frank Lampard have performed consistently, but that quartet aside, there has been a marked lack of intensity at times in games as well as collective and individual losses of concentration and cohesion.
On the face of it, City’s squad seems ideally suited to play 4-3-3 – Touré and Lampard or Fernandinho or Milner either side of Fernando with any manner of combinations among the front three. Not only would such a system free Touré of some of those defensive responsibilities in the tougher matches, it would enable Silva – the team’s best performer this term – to spend much more time in the central position where he is most effective and consolidate the middle.
As things stand, City are so much less than the sum of their expensive, gifted parts. Even in those title-winning campaigns they were arguably less than the sum of their parts but with Chelsea raising the bar among opponents, Pellegrini must start extracting more collectively from a team whose time is now.
The average age of City’s first choice XI is around the 29 mark. They are built to win now, to be successful now. Can they be again this season? It should be well within their capabilities, but Pellegrini might have to adapt for that to happen and that does not look like occurring any time soon.
