PL Preview: Will Manchester City and Chelsea Break Tradition and Go Toe-to-Toe?

It was easier to predict in the old days. When Jose Mourinho was in charge of Chelsea in the week leading into a heavyweight bout, he would invariably channel Muhammad Ali's mouth to wind up his managerial counterpart, before on the first bell implementing a tactical masterclass borrowed from the boxer's most famous fight.

Chelsea's trip to Manchester City in February 2014 is a classic case study. In the buildup to the game, Mourinho had labelled Chelsea "a little horse" compared to Manchester City's thoroughbreds, per the BBC. It was no more than a smokescreen designed to temper rising expectations over Chelsea's title aspirations, growing as they steadily were in his first season back in England.

Then-City manager Manuel Pellegrini more rolled his eyes than rubbed them, but as a wasp-like irritant, Mourinho had done his job. Ahead of Saturday lunchtime's meeting between the two clubs, Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte have indulged in no such horseplay, both seemingly content to keep their own counsel.

In 2014, the real sting came in the ring. Just as Ali did to George Foreman in 1974's Rumble in the Jungle, Chelsea leaned on the ropes in the early rounds, rope-a-dope with chin jutted provocatively, absorbing City's best shots. Once the home team had punched themselves out, the away side rained in with counter-attacks of exacting economic precision. Ali won with a knockout. 

Chelsea won 1-0, just as they did many games of a similar ilk, a scoreline that ultimately flattered the hosts more than the visitors. That the knockout blow arrived courtesy of Branislav Ivanovic, of all people, was the equivalent of Ali perplexing Foreman by repeatedly throwing unorthodox right-hand leads.

It ended City's run of 11 straight home wins, and in the process, Chelsea became the first side since November 2010 to stop the champions-elect from scoring in their own back yard. That was no mean feat considering City had plundered 68 league goals already by that point. 

When Mourinho employs counter-attacking tactics these days, it leads to accusations he is parking the same bus he introduced into football's rich lexicon, via a withered assessment of Tottenham Hotspur's lack of ambition in a goalless draw at Stamford Bridge in 2004.

Some 12 years on, Conte is more in charge of a runaway train than a stationary bus. From the moment he asked Cesc Fabregas to get off for not having a valid ticket the propensity to graft in a middle two in a 3-4-3, replete with wing-backs, Conte's Chelsea have hit opponents unconditioned to playing the system with the affront of a cold snap on a summer's day.

Even if he wanted to, it's difficult to see how Conte could quell his team's enthusiasm, as infectious as his own at present, to do anything other than play on the front foot and go toe-to-toe with City. 

Mourinho may have written the Premier League manual for how to pull off the quintessential away win in a top-of-the-table clash, but it's unlikely Conte has even bothered thumbing through it given the disparity of their respective philosophies. If it's a rumble that ensues in Manchester on Saturday, Chelsea will be more Foreman than Ali.

Arsenal were so good and Chelsea so bad on that fateful meeting between the two sides in late September, a 3-0 half-time deficit convinced Conte to ditch the off-the-shelf back four he had inherited for a bespoke back three. Just like that, it became crystal clear what Chelsea had been missing.

Conte without a back three is like Tommy Cooper without his fez, or Groucho Marx sans cigar. As the legendary American designer Charles Eames used to say, the details make the design. Since making the switch, Chelsea have won seven successive league games, scoring 19 and conceding only once. Conte has made just one change in this period, with Pedro having come in for Willian and kept his place courtesy of some fine performances.

Perhaps only Arsenal could win a game 3-0 and inadvertently bestow on their opponents a gift that could prove to be defining not just for Chelsea's season, but the title race, period. They'd steal your wife and then ring up a week later to ask if you fancied going on a double date with Scarlett Johansson.

Conte has gone from being used to bookend montages conveying how the Premier League is now the home of the Galactico manager, to being smack bang central. In the video below, a softly spoken, ethereal John Terry speaks to former team-mate William Gallas of being dropped by Conte as though it's almost a religious experience. If Fabregas, Willian, Oscar, Ivanovic and Michy Batshuayi make similar videos, it's officially a cult. 

According to ESPN's Mark Ogden, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is similarly so enamoured with the Italian he has gone as far as to take down all of the Guardiola posters that previously adorned his bedroom/yacht walls. It would appear even Russian oligarchs can have their head turned by a suave Italian in the face of unrequited love elsewhere. 

It's no surprise Conte's stock has risen so sharply. From the frankly shapeless mess he was greeted with on taking the job, he has forged a highly cohesive unit, and beyond that, individuals are flourishing under his management. There are deeper problems at Chelsea than the superficial ones he has solved so impressively—the age and depth of the squad to name two—but they are historic rather than of his own making.

David Luiz has gone from being the world's most expensive football-comedian hybrid to the league's deepest and arguably best quarterback. Eden Hazard is sending Mourinho's blood pressure through the roof each game he plays, and not in the way he did briefly last season when the pair still shared a dressing room.

Winning three successive Scudettos with a Juventus side coming off two consecutive seventh-place finishes was impressive on Conte's part, but nothing like the achievement of getting Diego Costa to a place where he has gone seven league games without a booking. The 10 league goals he has scored already have been helpful, too.

Few would have anticipated that after Manchester City began the campaign under Guardiola's tenure with 10 successive victories, the primary question being asked ahead of Saturday's clash with Chelsea is how he might go about containing Conte's juggernaut?

For a man who has previously coached Barcelona and Bayern Munich, it's unlikely questions about containment have been posed to him too often. In any case, he'd likely just meet any such enquiry with the same raised eyebrow The Beatles might have proffered if asked in the 1960s how they might keep pace with The Rolling Stones.

Given City would go top with a win—Liverpool would usurp them with victory at Bournemouth a day later—it's a touch too soon to expect Guardiola to be in any way reverential.

As touchline duels go, though, this between the studied deep thinker and the world's worst poker player can't be far off as good as it gets. Both in their own way are as tactically obsessed as the other. It is safe to say neither is a big box-set watcher given the amount of time they spend analysing opponents.

By his own admission, via Marti Perarnau's Pep Confidential: Inside Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich, City's boss is no more likely to park the bus than Dennis Hopper's character in Speed: "All I do is look at footage of an opponent and work out how to demolish them."

He must be watching the wrong videos, given the Etihad Stadium has resembled a bus depot of late. City head into Saturday's game on the back of three consecutive 1-1 draws at home in the league.

After the Middlesbrough stalemate, which followed dropped points to Everton and Southampton, Guardiola somewhat counter-intuitively went on the defensive himself, issuing a lament via the Gazette: "People will say 'use the counter-attack.' But how can you counter-attack when the opponent does not attack?"

It's a valid point, to a degree. Most opposition teams arrive at the Etihad with all the ambition of a Crystal Maze contestant who requests to take the automatic lock-in before even seeing what the task is. Ronald Koeman, Claude Puel and Aitor Karanka could counter they would be happy to attack if they were armed with the Premier League's most bounteous budget.

Conversely, on their travels, City have an immaculate record. League victories at Burnley, Crystal Palace, West Bromwich Albion, Swansea City, Manchester United and Stoke City suggest the Citzens love an away day more than a middle manager with too much time on their hands and a weird obsession with Alton Towers. That doesn't sound too much like Guardiola, to be fair.

Mourinho's relative struggles across the city, when coupled with the aforementioned away record, seems to have buried the issue of City not having won at home in the league since September 17.

Key for City rectifying this fact on Saturday could be ensuring Raheem Sterling on one wing, and either Nolito or Leroy Sane on the other, maintain their width and resist the temptation to drift inside. They usually play in a narrow manner, working off Aguero's focal point in order to play quick, short, innovative passes in and around the opposition's box.

To come off the flank and play in the no man's land in between Chelsea's back three and wing-backs would give the visitors something to think about, but what it wouldn't do is quell the threat of Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso in an attacking sense. By playing as high, orthodox wingers, Sterling and Nolito or Sane (or even Jesus, Navas) would effectively force Moses and Alonso into playing as orthodox full-backs. 

Neither—especially Moses, whose natural position is further up the pitch—wants to do that. The key for Guardiola will be to make Chelsea look like they are playing with a 5-4-1 formation. 

Moses has been a revelation since being converted into a wing-back, but he has yet to be properly tested as a defender for a full 90 minutes. Against Tottenham last weekend, he was nothing like as effective when Heung-Min Son stayed wide and pressed high in the opening period.

Sterling on song is capable of twisting the blood of proper old-school full-backs, who view entering an opponent's half an affront to their profession, let alone a relative novice. It will be fascinating to see how Moses fares if put on the back foot.

What City cannot afford to let happen is allow the Nigerian flyer to play as he did in the second half against Spurs, when his average position was pretty much level with Costa's—and beyond it at the point he scored Chelsea's winner.

Tottenham's first-half performance when they performed a high press mirrored the tactics employed by Arsenal and Liverpool before them. In each game, albeit the latter two were before the switch to a back three, Chelsea struggled to find any rhythm. It doesn't take Rinus Michels or Johan Cruyff to point out it's hard to pick a pass when three of four opponents swarm around whoever is in possession.

Guardiola will expect more shuttle runs from Sergio Aguero than someone attempting to complete the bleep test. City's top goalscorer, level with Costa on 10, would probably prefer to concentrate his efforts on adding to the nine goals he has scored against Chelsea over his career—four of which came last season as City completed an impressive double over their visitors.  

Chelsea are so powerful going forward, as when they attack, it's effectively with a front five. Buccaneering wing-backs pose innumerable questions of opposition full-backs. On Saturday, City's will be tempted to follow Hazard and Pedro when they drift infield—which, in turn, leaves space down the flanks for Moses and Alonso to bomb into.

With Costa leading the line superbly, and coolly for once, Pedro in the best form of his Chelsea career and Hazard pretty much back to the form that won him the PFA Player of the Year award the season before last, it would take a far more defensively minded coach than Conte not to fancy taking the game to City. 

John Stones will be aware if he is bullied by Costa it will be open season for those who see the player's self-confidence as being little more than insouciance, given it is still rare he goes through a game without looking as though he's got a defensive howler in the locker.

As Jamie Carragher put it when commenting on an Everton game featuring Stones last season, for Sky Sports (h/t the Guardian's Andy Hunter): "I've said this before about John Stones. People come back at me and say: 'Oh, typical English mentality, it's about time we had a player who steps out with the ball.' I've had five or six foreign managers and not one of them would want me—or any defender—to be doing Cruyff turns in the six-yard box."

It's worth noting, for the record, that Carragher never played under Guardiola. 

In arguably City's three hardest games this season (bar Manchester United away), against Barcelona at home and Borussia Monchengladbach and Tottenham away, Guardiola went with Stones, Pablo Zabaleta, Nicolas Otamendi and Aleksander Kolarov as his back four. It is as close as you will get to a clue with regards selection for Saturday given he has yet to name the same back four/three in consecutive games this season.

An alternative formation, if Guardiola doesn't see an advantage in doubling up in wide positions to outnumber Chelsea's wing-backs, could see Kolarov move inside to form a back three and Zabaleta drop out to allow for an extra body in midfield. If he did that, N'Golo Kante would have to prove Leicester City boss Claudio Ranieri's view he is worth two players to be true.

Even a superhuman effort from the Frenchman may not be enough, given Fernandinho is arguably his equal in never seemingly being more than a yard from whoever is in possession. For two players deemed as holding midfielders, they chase the ball as a street dog does scraps thrown from a takeaway window. Whoever comes out on top between the pair on Saturday could prove decisive.

When Guardiola pitched up in England, he did so with a reputation for being the great innovator. In pondering using his full-backs as central midfielders, or employing so many of his players in "false" positions City's starting XI would give Madame Tussauds a run for its money, a little piece of him must look at Conte's fairly standard 3-4-3 and think, "is this all it takes to get people in England excited?"

If Chelsea attack City, it will be a blessed relief for the home team. The last side to show any ambition at the Etihad was Barcelona. City swept away the world's best club side, despite Barca having dominated the ball for the first 40 minutes, in what was the vertex of Guardiola's time in England to date.

He'd love nothing more than to be the coach who worked out how to expose the weaknesses in Chelsea's system. To be the man to make them look ordinary, just as Tottenham coach Mauricio Pochettino did to his City side back at the start of October. At the time, everyone was getting overexcited about his team, just as they are Conte's now.

It's worth remembering, just as night follows day, Chelsea's run of victories will be curtailed before too long.

And as Manchester City have subsequently discovered, once the secret is out, it doesn't half make things more difficult.