John Stones' Omission from Pep Guardiola's Settled Defence Raises Questions
Manchester City might have answered several questions with their excellent display in the comeback win against Arsenal on Sunday, but one player was again curiously left uninvolved throughout the 90 minutes.
Despite seemingly being a defender built entirely in the mould that manager Pep Guardiola would appear to like, John Stones was left on the bench for the second match running.
The England international had shown previously he was probably the best suited of all City’s centre-backs to play in the style the boss demands. However, for the club’s first clean sheet since the end of October—a 2-0 victory over Watford in the midweek before the 2-1 win over Arsenal—an out-of-position Aleksandar Kolarov was preferred over him.
On his day, Kolarov has proved he can do the job at centre-back, but City fans will know that the Serbian can be quite hit-and-miss at the best of times, even when in his natural left-back role. Moved inside, he’s been anything ranging from competent to a liability this season.
With Stones fit and available, it seems a little bizarre that he was left out for two games running, especially after the fuss made of the new signing when he first arrived from Everton in a £47.5 million deal, a record for an English defender.
Before the clean sheet against Watford, it could have been argued that City’s best defensive lineup had seen Stones alongside Nicolas Otamendi, too—but Guardiola chose to rotate again as he hunted for that elusive shutout.
It seems too easy to just suggest the manager was resting the defender ahead of a busy period. City have been awful at the back this season, and Stones was supposed to be the poster boy for their new style. But he has been left out of three of the last six Premier League games, despite being involved in each top-flight match before that, mostly as a starter.
Stones hasn’t been in the best of form since his transfer, it would be fair to say, with the nadir of his lack of confidence showing in City’s 4-2 loss at Leicester City. He was shaky throughout, and it was his underhit pass to Claudio Bravo that allowed Jamie Vardy in to round the goalkeeper and bag his first hat-trick in league football.
The new signing has also struggled when he's been played in a back three. That City have failed to win when starting with that setup shows how unsuited they are as a team to the system; Stones has perhaps looked the most uncomfortable of all the defence when in that formation.
Of course, that was also part of the problem at Leicester—as Kolarov and Bacary Sagna proved to be ineffective alongside him, while there was no protection from the midfield.
However, Stones has hardly been the disaster that is often made out, and there’s a little misconception among those who aren’t regular viewers of City that the young centre-half has been an unmitigated disaster since his new club splashed out on him. He’s not been great, but he’s been mainly comfortable as Guardiola has chopped and changed.
He's made the sorts of mistakes that get highlighted when a team has spent £47.5 million on a player but are quickly forgotten if this was three years down the line and he'd settled well.
Guardiola played down his decision to leave Stones out after the Arsenal match: "I just apologise to John because he doesn't deserve to be out [of the team]," he said. "I like him, I love him a lot because he's a very nice guy and good, but I just tried to do…the same back four we played against Watford.
"Bacary [Sagna] also deserves to play, but today I wanted to [play] the same back four we played against Watford. That was what I decided."
The root of the question, though, isn’t whether Stones is in Guardiola’s plans. It would be absurd for the manager to be freezing out the 22-year-old, given how new he is to the club and how he had slotted in so well at the start of the season.
Instead, the real nub of the problem, is whether Stones is suited to the type of defending Guardiola has had to resort to. Make no mistake, against Watford and Arsenal—where City looked better at the back than they had done for some time—the manager had to compromise on what he believes is best in order to get his team playing with confidence again.
In an ideal world, Guardiola’s back four would be happy to have the ball under pressure and comfortable enough to pass it around to create the space that would set the team up on the attack. However, that's not happened and whoever he's picked to form his rearguard have looked like rabbits caught in the headlights, unable to cope with the task in hand.
Despite the manager regularly telling his press conferences that he'd never change his style for anyone and that it would work in the long run, he has changed his style.
Against both Watford and Arsenal, City were more direct than they'd been in previous weeks, and all of the defence seemed to be under instruction to keep the ball and find a team-mate where possible—but also not to be afraid to put their foot through it if there was danger.
Guardiola freely admits he's still learning about the English game. He's talked of fighting for second balls rather than trying to win possession with a high press, despite the latter seeming to be how City started the campaign. Perhaps this alteration to his defensive setup is the next part of how he adapts his philosophy so it can work in England.
That then raises questions about Stones again. Has the defender joined the club with Guardiola’s original plan in mind, only to find that original plan is going to change significantly? Or is this new way of defending only in place as a stopgap because the Catalan doesn’t have the players he wants to demand a more possession-based style?
If it's the latter, then Stones may find himself on the bench a few more times before the season’s out—until Guardiola’s had a couple more transfer windows to target the sort of defender who will be happy to move the ball under pressure.
If it's the former, that doesn't bear thinking about for City fans as it could make Stones another expensive centre-back who isn't suited to the club. It would, however, be a huge surprise for the England international not to fit in somewhere, especially given Guardiola's track record of working out a playing style that best suits those in his squad and given how keen the manager's been on the England international since he arrived from Everton.
Perhaps the frustration from the supporters and the intense focus from the media at the quality of City's defending comes from the manager's track record. He has transformed his previous clubs into successes almost overnight, but it's easy to forget that City are nowhere near the standard Bayern Munich and Barcelona were when the Catalan took charge.
Nobody is saying Guardiola had it easy, but he wasn't taking over a team that had only just scraped into the Champions League and had been humbled regularly home and away in the final 18 months of the previous manager's reign. Nor were his last two clubs going through an identity crisis, especially in defence, where they'd not looked right for nearly two years.
Whether there's an underlying problem with Stones beyond a lack of form remains to be seen. Guardiola's public apology seemed to deflect the attention away from the situation, but more photographs of the defender sitting on the bench and looking glum will highlight the issue again.
That’s what will happen if the manager chooses to go with the same back four again when City take on Hull City on Boxing Day. Can Stones continue to "deserve to play" but be left out in the name of a settled defence—or should the manager be trying to get that consistency with the Englishman in the team?
It seems far more logical, after all, to try and build the back four around Stones, as the one defender at the club who seems to be safe from transfer.
All quotes were gathered firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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