Tottenham Opposition Primer: Manchester City

By Ryan Wrenn | Sep 30, 2016

ENFIELD, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 29: Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino watches his players during the Tottenham Hotspur training session at the Tottenham Hotspur training centre on September 29, 2016 in Enfield, England. (Photo by Tottenham Hotspur FC/Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images) /

Manchester City’s perfect Premier League season so far might intimidate Tottenham, but six games don’t tell the whole story.

Four of those six matches have come against the bottom teams in the Premier League as of this weekend. Last week’s 4-0 win was against Bournemouth, currently in 15th place.

The 2-1 win over Manchester United was, to be fair, magisterial. Pep Guardiola’s innovative tactics and possession savvy were aided in some part by a completely botched team selection from José Mourinho however.

Wins are wins regardless of how they come, and City’s managed better results again similar competition to Spurs. There is, then, some suggestion that City are operating on another, higher level than their competition Sunday.

How, then, do you account for the Champions League result against Celtic that City earned on Wednesday?

The perennial Scottish Premier League champions shocked the visitors, going ahead three times before eventually drawing 3-3 to create the first blemish of Guardiola’s record at City.

Such results can often be shrugged off to some extent. Football contains a healthy amount of randomness and luck, and it doesn’t always break in the best team’s favor. What Brendan Rodgers managed with his Celtic side wasn’t just a fluke though — there was a design here, of a type that Tottenham know very well.

The general idea most teams take when confronting City is defend and absorb. Let Sergio Agüero, David Silva, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne come at you and hope that you can frustrate them for at least 90 minutes, then attack when and if you can.

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That tactics like that don’t work to contain such a talented bunch is hardly surprising. It’s a reactionary approach that Guardiola teams take for a matter of course and prepare extensively for. To really set them off their rhythm, you have to identify and exploit their weakness.

In the iteration of City, that weakness is in defense. Nicolas Otamendi, Aleksander Kolarov and John Stones are fine players in the usual system Guardiola prefers. They’re good distributors, they know how to cover and they generally look collected when pressing high up the pitch.

The Celtic result suggested that not all is well in City’s defense however. Rodgers had his attackers aggressively close down City’s defenders as they attempted to pass the ball forward. The result were misplaced passes, lost balls and, ultimately, three goals conceded.

Granted, this wasn’t a first choice squad. Guardiola held back key names in preparation for Sunday’s visit to Tottenham. Stones, Bacary Sagna, Jesús Navas and Leroy Sané were all on the bench, and could yet feature this weekend.

Still, it was exactly the kind of encouragement Mauricio Pochettino will need. Such pressing that Rodgers utilized Wednesday is Tottenham’s stock and trade, a manner of play embodied in a single team.

As such, there might not be a game this season in which Pochettino has to make fewer tweaks to his system. Unlike Middlesbrough, Sunderland and CSKA Moscow, City will be too proud to sit back and wait for Tottenham to attack. They might be a tad more conservative than if they were at home, but Pochettino can expect there to be plenty of space for his attack to operate.

The same basic conditions were present for Tottenham’s 4-1 demolition of City in last September’s iteration of the same fixture. City were confident that could come at Tottenham and did so even as they conceded one, two, three, four goals. That was a result that sparked Tottenham’s season into high gear, and one that would set the pace for much of the following eight months.

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Can we expect the same here? Probably not. Guardiola is a much more pragmatic and cautious coach than Manuel Pellegrini. He will make adjustments and substitutions that can dramatically change the tone as needed. Not to mention the fact that even without De Bruyne, they are still wielding among the most in-form offenses in Europe.

Tottenham can play their classic game against City with some confidence that they’ll get through. Pochettino needs to be ready to make his own changes, however. Just because Tottenham appear uniquely suited to best this City side doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be a chess match.