Analysing Pep Guardiola's Manchester City and why Jose Mourinho faces the hardest problem in football to solve

With pretty much any of the great sides their forward play has generally been based on a core of four to five brilliant players, but City and their manager are changing the mould

As much of football’s aristocracy gathered in Moscow last week for the World Cup draw, the conversation in one corner turned to the club game, and who was especially impressing. Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City were naturally discussed at length, but one high-profile coach had particularly high praise for the Catalan.

“He looks at football in a way like no-one else I’ve ever known,” the manager told The Independent. “It’s virtually unique.”

It’s also now possible that has led to Guardiola creating a truly original and unique way of playing, something genuinely unprecedented, and one that appropriately has City on the brink of a unique and unprecedented achievement: 14 successive wins in a single Premier League season. To manage it at Manchester United on Sunday and away to their biggest rivals and closest challengers would only emphasise the completeness of what they’re doing, and further reflect the extent of this evolution.

It is also the puzzle Jose Mourinho must figure out, but the real challenge is that it is not actually any one problem but several all together.

As one figure who works with City confided to The Independent, the real key with this side is that they have so many points of attack, but those points are always moving, always rotating, always revolving. That in itself creates an almost infinite number of possible moves and combinations, that really cannot come without a very sophisticated level of co-ordination, and a lot of work and deep comprehension.

It is why they are currently on course to smash goal records this season, and one reason why they have hit so many late strikes, with no one yet able to completely shut their fully-motivated first team out. The 0-0 in the League Cup against Wolves came in a competition that Guardiola has made his disregard for well known, meaning it is still unknown how to truly stop them.

This is not to say they are the best attacking team ever or anything of the sort, since that is a totally different argument with naturally different parameters, but this does mark a difference - or, at least from his broadly similar Bayern Munich, an evolution - in how attacking has been executed.

With pretty much any of the great sides you can think of - particularly in the Premier League - their forward play has generally been based on a core of four to five brilliant players who had obvious strengths and relatively fixed roles.

De Bruyne has been instrumental in Guardiola's revolutionary system (Getty)

The best XI of Manchester United 1998-2001 for example had the interchanging of Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole, bolstered by the ingenuity of Paul Scholes, and served by the alternating wing-play of David Beckham’s crossing and Ryan Giggs’s dribbling. It was of course brilliant wing-play, but relatively conventional, just perfectly executed.

Subsequent supreme sides have gradually multiplied this level of interchanging and inherent mobility, from Arsenal’s “Invincibles” and United’s Cristiano Ronaldo-fired 2008 Champions League winners through to Carlo Ancelotti’s Chelsea and the two Manchester City champions.

Jesus and Aguero in turn are both thriving as City's focal point (Getty)

All have of course had real unpredictability, like what Eden Hazard offers with Chelsea, but what Guardiola has tried to do with City is multiply this to the Nth degree and set up a system whereby there are effectively “five Eden Hazards” or “five Alexis Sanchezs” - someone he ominously wants to add in January, because the Catalan is sensing that winning all the major trophies is suddenly possible.

You could say it has turned much of the thinking on its head, but the very words imply there is some sort of fixed structure, and that is not the case here. There is instead endless mobility, and a series of super-fast players who can hurt you both inside and out.

From the focal-point attackers of Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva to the elasticity of Gabriel Jesus and stretching play of Kyle Walker, there are often seven different points of attack opposition defences have to track.

Silva is another to flourish with freedom afforded to him by Guardiola (Getty)

This is also why it is a tactical evolution from even Guardiola’s Barca. That team was still on a higher plane, and was maybe the finest side ever, but that’s because mobility was built around the highest-quality players: Sergio Busquets, Xavi, Andres Iniesta and of course Leo Messi. There was still an identifiable formation that could be picked out, in a way you can’t with City.

It has genuinely been as if Guardiola has adapted to the lack of players of Xavi’s level, let alone Messi’s, and sought to create a system that can work independent of that.

It is telling there are no completely concrete roles in City’s attack. Even De Bruyne floats, Guardiola specifically allowing that in his game and giving him greater freedom from the “20 zones” approach every player in his side must understand.

Guardiola has built something truly unique at City (Getty)

It is also an evolution in another sense. As that figure who works with the club argues, “there is something very “street football’ about a lot of these players. They’re modern and super-fit but also super-disciplined street footballers. In any previous era, any one of a number of these guys would have been the maverick of his team and possibly getting away without tracking back and frequent selfishness or over-indulgence on the ball… but Pep has made a choir of them.”

The choirmaster has added even more variety himself. You only have to look at how he switched and micro-managed at half-time of the 2-1 win over West Ham. This is why they eventually get you. They always have another way to hurt you, deeply know that, and thereby don’t let any panic seep into their game. Instead, the sense of a siege and inevitability only builds… until they get those late goals. It is reminiscent of so many Sir Alex Ferguson-era late rallies.

It is also why the money argument only goes so far. Sure, Guardiola has had the distinctive advantage of being able to sign players with specific attributes he likes, but it is not as if he has just then put them out on the pitch and let them play. It is quite the opposite.

It is also someway ironic - and something of an opportunity for Mourinho - that it isn’t completely the case at the opposite end. City have missed the specific attributes of John Stones, and it has slightly slowed the initial stages of their build-up play, to go with how opposition sides are suddenly trying to block all space around their goal.

That looks like the only way to even try and stop them - unless Mourinho can come up with something virtually unique for this season this Sunday. It might require a different way of thinking, since Guardiola’s City are offering a different way of attacking.