Were there weaknesses to be found in Manchester City’s controlled demolition of Crystal Palace?

Manchester City managed to keep their race for the Premier League title on with a comfortable 3-1 win over Crystal Palace. The game was made comfortable for them thanks to Crystal Palaces compact, passive approach which saw them rarely move out of position and press Manchester City.

City almost had a training session for the first half on how to break down a deep block, and Guardiola will have been pleased with what he saw. In this tactical analysis, I will show how they were able to exploit Palaces deep block and how a key trend in Manchester Citys build-up could potentially be used against them in the future.

Lineups

City lined up with a 4-2-3-1, which is of course very flexible depending on situations on the pitch. This flexibility allowed for them to easily create overloads and get behind the lines, which is a key area of their play I will touch on. Crystal Palace opted to play a 4-1-4-1, with a clear focus on compactness and trying to limit this space between the lines.

Citys usual pocket play

Pep Guardiola and Man City are famed for being able to create and play in pockets between the lines of the opposition, and so it was naturally disappointing to see Crystal Palaces compact shape in the game. As mentioned, Palace opted not to press City and were instead focused on maintaining their rigid 4-5-1 shape. However, if City are given the time and space in the oppositions half with their desired players, they are capable of breaking any side down, no matter how compact they are.

Below we can see an example of City being given time inside the home sides half. Here, they have three players in the central pocket between the defence and midfield, with Sterling out wide in lots of space due to the central overload. Because of the timing of the run from David Silva to not be waiting in the pocket to receive, but instead arriving to receive, and because of the weight and quality of the pass from Laporte, the away side are able to play a straight ball through Palaces midfield block.

The lack of any form of press also doesnt help Palace in these kind