Every team has a weakness. Even the greatest sides in history have all had chinks in the armour that can be exploited. The difficulty is first identifying it, and then being able to create and implement tactics to exploit those weaknesses on the pitch. Manchester City over the past few seasons have slowly reduced their frailties and transitioned into a near-perfect footballing side under the hand of Pep Guardiola.
Looking at the Man City team in full flow in recent seasons, its been difficult to pick holes in how to beat them. There are very few teams, bar Liverpool, who have enjoyed success against the current Premier League champions.
In this scout report, we look into the goals conceded by Guardiolas men and using tactical analysis, attempt to identify areas of exploitability within their tactics.
The Numbers
Sifting through the numbers contained in the Premier League season reports, I came across an interesting typology chart depicting the types of goals each team has conceded. The types were split into four categories; long shots, counter-attacks, after set-pieces and direct FKs and penalties. I used this as a starting point for the analysis and noticed a few interesting statistics in one of the charts, copied below.
The graph on the left shows the total amount of goals each team has conceded and how this compares to the average (39.2 goals). As youd expect Man City, though not the best, are below the average conceding just 31 goals in the season to date. The same rings true for the other charts; Man City fall below the average in all other typology groups, except for one: long shots.
The chart on the right shows the goals conceded from long-shots in the Premier League. Youll immediately notice that Man City stand out amongst their rivals, being considerably above the average of 4.6 long-shot goals conceded. Along with Aston Villa and Everton, Man City are the joint worst in the league in terms of goals conceded from long-range efforts, conceding eight in total a massive 26% of their total goals conceded figure. Compared this to their immediate rivals Liverpool, who have conceded only two making up just 10% of their goals conceded I wanted to see whether this was a real weakness in the Guardiola system or just an anomaly.
