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Second guessing Guardiola

As Manchester City travel to Bavaria to face Bayern Munich in their Champions League opener on Wednesday, Sam Drury looks at whether Pep Guardiola's side are as easy to predict as many seem to think...

Josep Guardiola, head coach of Bayern Munich

As Manchester City fans arrive at the Allianz Arena for their Champions League opener, they will be confident that they know what their side will be up against.

They played Bayern Munich at the same stage of the competition last season and the way that Pep Guardiola wants his sides to play is no secret. However, on Wednesday the Spaniard could set up slightly differently.

When people think of a Guardiola team the image that comes to mind is inevitably that of his all-conquering Barcelona side.

Asked to describe them and phrases like ‘tika-taka’ and ‘false nine’ will invariably be used and talk of patient, probing passing from side to side, back to front is unavoidable.

That is often how it was: passing, passing and more passing. Opposition defences looking well set up to keep them at bay and then, within an instance, they had conceded. The smallest of openings was spotted and the team came to life; a rapid interchange of passes leading to a simple finish.

The other thing most associate with that side and, as a result, Guardiola, is the formation. 4-3-3. Full-backs bombing on, inverted wingers cutting inside, with the holding midfielder dropping in between the two centre-backs. It was a formula that worked to devastating effect, yielding two Champions League triumphs and countless domestic honours.

Barcelona's players celebrates with coach Pep Guardiola

So when he looked to adapt a back three at the beginning of the season, using a 3-4-1-2 or 3-4-2-1 system, some were a little surprised. Guardiola had always been a 4-3-3 man, had he not?

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To put it bluntly, no. By the end of Guardiola’s four years at Barcelona you were just as likely to see his team lined up in a 3-4-3 formation as you were the 4-3-3. People questioned the wisdom of changing a winning formula but the Spaniard knew that he couldn’t afford to let his side stagnate. While switching to three at the back may have appeared a big change the reality is that this was the shape adopted when in possession, regardless of which starting formation was employed. 

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Full-backs bombing on, inverted wingers cutting inside, the holding midfielder dropping in between the two centre-backs. In essence when all these things occur, you have a team lined up in a variation of 3-4-3.

Last season Guardiola stuck to the 4-3-3 as he attempted to implement a new style of play at Bayern. The Bavarians romped to the Bundesliga title but Guardiola struggled to get his new charges playing with quite the same fluency as his Barca side, particularly in the Champions League knockout stages.

Despite how impressive they had been under Jupp Heynckes in 2012/13, a change of style and emphasis was always going to take time but there were enough positive signs to suggest that this Bayern side can be successful using their own take on tika-taka.

It seems that Guardiola is now confident that his players are comfortable enough with the style of play to move things on and introduce a new formation or two as he embarks on his second season at the helm.

With so many of his players capable of playing in a number of different positions, Guardiola has plenty of options. The fact that arguably the best full-back pairing in world football – Philipp Lahm and David Alaba – can also form part of one of the best midfield trios in Europe, says it all.

Xabi Alonso, fresh from his transfer from Real Madrid, has taken to Bayern like a duck to water and is one of the few players Manuel Pellegrini will be confident of knowing where he’ll start - at the base of the midfield. However, there have even been suggestions that the former Liverpool playmaker could drop in and play as a centre-back.

Philipp Lahm is perhaps the most intelligent player I have ever trained in my career. He is at another level
Pep Guardiola

Even with injuries to a host of key men there is flexibility to Bayern that enables them to switch formations and rotate player positions at will. Manchester City’s coaching staff will not have slept easily this past week. 

So far this season, Bayern have used three different formations in their opening three Bundesliga matches. Twice they adopted a back three and on the other, a back four. Trying to predict what they will do against Manchester City is an exercise in futility. Even if you correctly guessed the system, the chances of correcting putting the exact XI in the right positions are slim.

In the past teams knew what to expect when playing a Guardiola side, the problem was figuring out how to stop it. Now it seems they don’t even have that much.

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