Manchester City Must Shape Up Slack Midfield to Spark Premier League Bid

Five months on from completing their triumphant Premier League and Capital One Cup double, Manchester City must consider whether their midfield needs a reboot.

The most concerning aspect of the champions’ 2-1 defeat at West Ham United last weekend was its familiar nature.

Buoyed by their own vibrant start to the season, the hosts overwhelmed and outhustled City’s central midfield two.

This was a tactic that served both Hull City and Tottenham Hotspur well in recent outings against Manuel Pellegrini’s side, only for superior attacking firepower to blast City to three points.

The Blues appeared jaded from their preceding and sapping 2-2 draw in the UEFA Champions League against CSKA Moscow, but the sight of an outworked and undermanned midfield is hardly a new thing.

City have allowed a uniform approach to develop, under which teams with fewer resources have a reasonable expectation of achieving success against them.

Yaya Toure’s regression from colossus to lumbering giant this term is a reason for the current midfield malaise, although Pellegrini’s problems in central areas run deeper.

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When Sergio Aguero joined in summer 2011, then-boss Roberto Mancini ditched his conservative 4-5-1 formation—featuring holding midfield duo Gareth Barry and Nigel de Jong—in favour playing two up front.

Five were scored at Tottenham, six famously put past Manchester United at Old Trafford and “the Poznan” celebration suddenly became very tiring.

Although Pellegrini operates with a higher defensive line and places greater onus on the flair of David Silva and Samir Nasir, the personnel and formation remains broadly the same as when a goal-glut first fired City to the Premier League title under Mancini.

Of the XI named on the unforgettable final day against Queens Park Rangers, eight remain at the Etihad Stadium as regular starters alongside Edin Dzeko—who came off the bench to net an injury-time equaliser before Aguero’s coup de grace.

This continuity is not without substantial merit. City have two league championships and as many domestic cup-final appearances to show for this approach over the past three seasons, facts that hardly scream crisis.

But an examination of the team’s results against other elite sides paints a more concerning picture.

In Premier League matches versus last season’s top-four counterparts, City won two out of six and lost to Chelsea twice. In nine matches against top-seeded Champions League teams, including the last-16 exit to Barcelona in March, the Blues have won twice—both those triumphs coming against Bayern Munich sides who had already secured group qualification.

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This raises the uncomfortable conclusion that when faced with teams at their own elite level in terms of on-field talent, City rarely steal a march as a result of a superior tactical plan.

A knock-on effect is that losses to the likes of West Ham, with their established City-slaying blueprint, feel more damaging because of the statistically slim hopes of regaining ground versus title rivals.

Wednesday's limp Capital One Cup defeat at home to Newcastle United showed another problem of Pellegrini's City. When the talented individuals at his disposal fail to hit top gear, they do not have a tactical framework to fall back on and grind out a result. 

As the game wound down and the holders belatedly battled to preserve their ailing cup defence, the football on show became even more sloppy and incoherent.

Sunday’s Manchester derby is possibly the best game for City to have on the horizon—a passionate occasion to shake the team from its current malaise.

Pellegrini’s admission that there is “a lack of confidence” in his team at present, per BBC Sport, means the vital forthcoming home matches with United and CSKA are probably a time for back-to-basics rather than tactical overhaul. 

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But look a little further down the fixture list and there are games against Southampton and Everton—tactically and technically adept teams who will look to exploit City’s soft centre in the same way West Ham and others have.

The time feels right for the 4-3-3 formation, identified as the preferred way forward under former Barcelona directors Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano as the Mancini era crumbled.

In a March 2013 piece for Goal.com, Liam Twomey reported.

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On the pitch, the plan is to get City playing an expansive, attacking 4-3-3 formation from the youth sides to the first team, with a view to facilitating the kind of frequent and seamless progression through the ranks witnessed at Barcelona and their legendary cantera, La Masia, in recent years.

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Twomey’s analysis was reported elsewhere as City closed in on Pellegrini (per the Guardian). To their credit, Begiristain and Soriano avoided the dogmatic approach of imposing tactics.

Pellegrini was allowed to find his feet on his own terms and rewarded his employers with the most successful season in the club’s history.

But now he should move to a midfield three, beyond parachuting a holding player in for the odd away game and high-class opposition. Imagine a central axis of James Milner and Fernandinho, highly accomplished midfield players sharing an insatiable work rate—the sluggish openings to City’s defeats over the past week would be less likely.

At odds with many of his colleagues, Milner is enjoying a rich vein of form, comparable to anything he has produced in sky blue and this should be rewarded with a run in his favoured central role.

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Star performances at the heart of midfield earned the England international his move to Eastlands from Aston Villa, yet Mancini and Pellegrini have both been reluctant to use him there.

Fernandinho still seems to be clearing his head from Brazil’s brutal humiliation against Germany in the World Cup semi-final, but it must not be forgotten that his introduction into the hosts line-up significantly improved their displays until that point.

If granted a degree of the freedom he enjoyed at Shakhtar Donetsk, Fernandinho’s path back towards top form will be smoother than if he continues to attempt to put out fires in an understaffed City midfield.

Alongside Milner and Fernandinho, Toure would have the chance to again be a wrecking ball as opposed to a middle-distance runner.

That trio operating behind a fluid front three of Silva, Aguero and possibly Stevan Jovetic has a contemporary feel and is the type of system that rising youth stars Marcos Lopes and Jose Angel Pozo could slot into when the time is right.

Pellegrini famously dismissed the modern obsession with agonising over formations (pieces like this one, for example) by witheringly referring to 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 4-3-3 and their ilk as “telephone numbers,” per The Manchester Evening News.

But now is the time for City’s boss to reconsider this view as, too frequently, his midfield fails to make its calls connect.