Tactics (part two. Ish).

Evening all,

I'm still coming down from last night (even the over three hours it took to get home didn't put me in a bad mood!), which was one of the best 50 minutes I've seen us play. I focussed on the use of Bravo last time and that the playing out from (and back to) him was designed to force the press from the opposition. Last night, we saw the next stage from that as well as some other tactical tweaks that I think will form the next step in Guardiolas changing of how we play this season.

The first forty minutes last night, although good in patches through getting Sterling isolated with their full back, was mainly Barca in control, much like periods in the first leg. Not only was Aguero up front, Sterling and and De Bruyne were staying completely wide to the touch line. This was the complete opposite to the first leg, in rather than pack the midfield out, we relinquished it completely to try and stretch Barca out. The consequence was the gaps we left that they exploited for their counter attacking goal, and the periods of sustained possession they had in the first half.

The other thing was us keeping steadfastly to playing out from the back or cycling possession between the centre backs and the keeper, only to then relinquish possession back to them as Barca started to press right up. Even with that happening, we kept with it for ten minutes (causing a few moans from people around me) and were struggling to get into the game.

Then, around the forty minute mark and not long before we equalised, tactical changes happened that, from what I saw, must have been preplanned and turned the game on its head. Guardiola had tried this before against Barca when at Bayern, in terms of changing the system during the first half, but no where near as successfully as last night.

Silva and Stones both got the message from the side and immediately, four things happened. De Bruyne moved centrally and Silva to the left, the defence and midfield pushed ten yards further up the pitch, both wide men tucked in to Gundogan and Fernandinho, and we started playing it longer from Caballero.

As Barca were still pushing up and stretched (and tried to continue like it for the rest of the game), we were taking MSN out of the equation by playing the ball over them and winning it back before it got to them. Even their chance came from Stones trying to win the ball back way ahead of the front men (and he was very unlucky with where the ball went).

As the midfield was pushed up, that left Busquets isolated and allowed for both the amount of fouls he had to do to stop us from being through, but also meant we had runners in Gundogan, Sterling and De Bruyne able to get past and create multiple one on ones with their defenders.

This puts Guardiolas comments on Aguero this week into context too, talking about wanting to improve him and saying how important he was. That was to get the selfless performance out of him that we needed last night. Although he was playing as the striker, he was never going to be our scoring outlet, he was there to keep the gap between Busquets and their defence to allow De Bruyne and Silva the space.

That increased directness and compact formation, I think we will see a lot of this season now. The main dilemma recently has been how to accommodate Gundogan, Silva, and De Bruyne together, but that formation suited all of them last night and Sterling is a completely different player playing on the right that still allows width when it's needed.

We will have more frustrating games like the run we went on recently and Guardiolas style is still a long way off being fully implemented. Enrique also reacted far too late and didn't do enough to get MSN back in the game. Play like we did in the second half though, we will be very difficult to stop. Once we are though, I'm sure Guardiola willl change it again and is probably working on it already!