So seductive. The man, the myth, and the legend has rocked up in England at the best team in the land and all the world. Today marks his first official day in charge, so it's the best day possible to start this season's MCFC (now Man City) thread. There's a whole lot new about City this season.
1) The Badge: Bye bye eagle and bye bye stars representing nothing but certainly not representing the European Championships we didn't win. Replaced by a lovely, slightly cartoonish roundel that Nike will not have to put a dumb shield around to put on the kits because they're too cheap to pay 9 cents an hour to someone to actually put a badge on properly
The guy on the right of the photo is clearly a United fan. He's unhappy and dressed in that dumb goofy Sir Baconface uniform all their supporters wear.
2) The Kit: This season City will wear the exact same dumb kit Nike is making everyone else wear. Not content to only do this dumb thing, they decided to make it as hard as possible for fans to embrace the new badge by making City have navy blue sleeves and sky blue shorts because being mistaken for Coventry is something you want to do when building out a new brand. The away shirt is even worse and I'm not ready to talk about it.
3) The Squad: With the cosmetic stuff out of the way, now down to the nitty gritty. Pep guys! Pep! MOTHERFUCKING PEP. I've always been an admirer because he coaches the game the way I want it to be coached and coaxes out of his players a desire to play "proper" football. Ball skills, space, movement, pressing. Win by the sword or die by the sword but always always always take out your fucking sword.
Two players have already been officially brought in. Gundogan and Nolito. As is tradition, Gundogan is injured and likely won't start the season. Nonetheless, his quality is obvious and he should go a long, long way to strengthening a midfield that had become very one dimensional and broken. He'll likely start every match he isn't on the physio table. The key question with him is how many of those matches will there be?
Nolito is a bit of a head scratcher in that he's not a big name nor a name you'd expect to see transferring to the PL at his age of 29. Barca were reportedly linked and his stats say that he's been creating chances like few in the game for the past few seasons at Celta Vigo. He made Spain's squad and started impressively before fading. He's an attacking forward who seems a natural fit for a 4-3-3 formation and likely a veteran stopgap who can be assured some quality in a team full of question marks.
Other rumored additions right now include: Thiago (likely a lazy thing because he's followed Pep), Stones (I think this gets done, it's too perfect a match), Leroy Sane (another winger forward), Pogba (not happening), Kroos (probably not happening), Bruno Peres (wingback)
4) Formation: This is the big question. Pep showed evolution at Bayern and didn't just force the team shape into his Barca formation, instead embracing wingers and putting together an impressive run of dominance for a team that was, admittedly, already dominant. In order to give myself an erection lasting long enough to call a doctor, I've been reading Pep Confidential and it is fascinating how he approached the entire Bayern setup and makes it quite interesting to speculate about what he might do with the current City roster.
GK: Pep favors his sweeper keepers and nobody would confuse Hart for that. There were some early links to Ter Stegen but that has died down and it seems City is going to try to give Hart a chance to transform himself. Fundamentally, a HG keeper is a massive win for a team in the PL so this makes sense. Hart has struggled low to his left for a while now and will need to work hard on distribution. City were rumored to be chasing Geronimo Rulli and may have some sort of strange deal with him whereby they'll eventually bring him in, so he may be lingering behind Hart. At the youth level, Angus Gunn has been pretty good and will likely loan out to gain experience.
The first major question will be whether Pep plays 3 at the back or 4 at the back. City's fullbacks have been mediocre to dire the last couple of seasons. Zabaleta got old and is almost assuredly off to Roma, which is incredibly sad. Sagna was a solid FB last year in Zabaleta's stead even 2 years older. Clichy has likewise been solid if unspectacular. Kolarov has been a complete mess. Of all the players on City's current roster, he's got the worst ball skills and touch and I just can't imagine he's going to make this team. With Zabaleta's sale, City have only one true RB on the roster in an aging Sagna and have not been linked with much aside from Peres on either FB position. To me, this heavily suggests a 3 CB formation. City have spent at this position and seem like they're going to bring in Stones (and failed to bring in Laporte) so Pep seems to want depth. Kompany, Otamendi, and Mangala are already in place. It's hard to imagine Mangala playing in a Pep team, but this group performed very poorly under Pellegrini. Nonetheless, Otamendi has looked great for Argentina and for Valencia prior (albeit prone to incredibly rash decisions to jump into midfield) so you have to wonder if the system, which included Yaya in a midfield 2, really did them not favors. They seemed both unlucky and exposed at various times last season. They'll need Kompany to stay healthy, which seems impossible, and to bring in Stones and have him realize some of his potential. It would certainly be a bold move to take this at times shambolic defensive unit and reduce the number of defenders but my hunch would be that he does exactly that. Knowing Pep, he'll probably have them drilled in multiple formations with a 3 variant being just an option.
If he does play 3 at the back you then have to see if there are wingbacks or something more along the lines of a 3-4-3. City have been linked with Peres, whom I haven't seen much of but many people describe as someone in the line of Alves. This idea excites me and would suggest that wingbacks aren't out of the question. But I can't see Pep playing Clichy or Kolarov at wing back and City haven't been linked to any left sided players (although Peres apparently can play either side). But this gets interesting because City don't really have a super strong midfield. The current depth is: Gundogan, Fernandinho, Fernando, Delph, Yaya (likely sold), and you can likely look to include De Bruyne, Silva, and Nasri in this group but it'd be a major change for any of them to play as true #8s. Somewhere in the back of my mind there's a belief that Nasri could be an orgasmically good pivot in Pep's system but I just don't think the player has his head on himself correctly enough that he could actually display the discipline that role requires. There's no natural Pivot on this roster --- I'd be shocked if Fernando had the ball skills for the role and his movement is beyond abysmal. He'd be a project at best and he hides from possession today. I don't think Gundogan was signed to play this deep and he and Fernandinho should bring a pretty high energy midfield . At times at Bayern Pep went without his beloved pivot but I'm having a very hard time piecing together who he sees playing that role at City. Obviously, this is where Yaya played for him before being displaced by Biscuits but I can't fathom Yaya staying nor can I see him having the work rate required for this role.
I think if you pencil in Fernandinho and Gundogan in CM you start to look like this:
-------------Hart--------------
CB---------CB-----------CB
WB--Fernandinho---Gundogan--WB
ATK----Aguero---ATK
If Navas stays, he could easily play as a wing back in this system. I have no idea what the plan would be on the left side. If we look at it as more of a 4-3-3, it'd look like this
-------------Hart-------------------
RB----CB-------CB------LB
-----------Pivot TBD------------
---Fern-------------Gundo-----
ATK----Aguero-------ATK
Which then starts to bring us to the attackers. City have a big and varied pool here. Aguero will obviously play. I sometimes wonder if he'll be deployed as a wide attacker instead of a straight #9 but for now I'll assume he's leading the line. You then have Silva and De Bruyne, both of whom play best as a #10. KDB has probably eclipsed Silva because of his goal scoring capability and the fact that he plays so many killer passes but they're probably closer than current reputation might suggest when Silva is not injured and on form. I thought Silva looked fantastic for Spain in the Euros.
Manuel Pellegrini tried to fit them both in by playing them wide of more serious box to box types and it never really worked. De Bruyne hugged his touch line and was too out of the games and Silva abandoned his position constantly which left his full back exposed. Neither puts forth a master class in tracking back. It's a really tough problem for Pep. I think Silva could be a fantastic 2 way CM himself but Pep would have to really motivate him to change the way he plays. For a small player, he has a lot of battle in him, and he is obviously the closest thing City have to both Iniesta and/or Xavi. Take your pick. It's possible that Pep asks him to do this. De Bruyne, imo, is the closest thing to Muller who isn't named Muller. He's not really a #10 nor is he a CF or a striker. He's a guy who just makes things happen. I think he'll be played very close to Aguero as a wide forward with little instruction to hug his touchline. Which means city would have to abandon width on one side--which is something Pep detests because most of his system is about creating those spaces and giving an attacker space to operate in. Nonetheless, Muller was sometimes deployed this way and Bayern certainly made it work.
The remaining attacking position, outside of Aguero, will surely be a dribbling winger type. Sterling and Nolito will probably fill this role. Sterling has had his confidence assassinated by the British fans and press over the last year and seems a shadow of the relatively limited player we bought from Liverpool but hopefully Pep can get him back to being a player who at least takes a man on the dribble and makes things happen. He's certainly got the speed and needs to be played in space to have a hope of beating a man. Nolito has played for Pep before and has played this kind of role for his teams so he should be intimately familiar playing as an inverted winger.
Bony will likely be sold, Ihenacho will probably get chances across the front lone in all 3 ATK positions. I don't know what will happen with Nasri. If City are able to purchase Sane, I think he steps into the same roles as Nolito and Sterling but on the other side. He may be an imperative purchase in that respect as I don't think Navas is capable of actually beating a man and playing in that role if Pep wants to deploy 2 inverted wingers around Aguero.
This is beyond wordy at this point and I think my conclusion on formation is that I haven't got a fucking clue. Pep will probably interpret/invent a new formation anyway. I can't fit the personnel they're likely to have into either, but no matter what I think we're going to see some very interesting lineups out of Pep as he works this out. I'm a tactics junkie so this is absolutely fascinating to me.
4) Upcoming stuff: City are officially unveiling Pep in what is sure to be a cringe fest on Sunday. The rest of the new stuff will trickle out over the weekend as the club have a multi day even going with fans in the region. They kicked it off by throwing the new badge up on the Manchester City Hall, which is unremarkable to me because they are, after all, the only team in Manchester so it was a natural fit. Because City finished 4th, they have a CL Qualifier to play in mid August. There are permutations that can see them playing a very good team very early. It would obviously be a disaster for Pep to go out of CL in the qualifiers so he's got to figure out some of this stuff very quickly. There is the usual pre season tour, which will take the club mostly to China but in reality all around the world. Pep's start up will be hampered by both injury and the players who will take extended break after the Euros. This should give Fabian Delph plenty of time to try to translate his horrible accent into English.
This post is already way too long, I'll post about the Youth in a subsequent post.
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