Manchester City are dominating all the areas on the pitch that it’s possible to
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 09: Riyad Mahrez celebrates with teammates Phil Foden and John Stones of Manchester City after scoring their team's first goal from the penalty spotduring the Premier League match between Manchester City and Brentford at Etihad Stadium on February 09, 2022 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Lynne Cameron - Manchester City/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
By Sam Lee Feb 10, 2022 15 Another game against Brentford, another Manchester City performance that won’t contribute much to the end-of-season highlights DVD but another which demonstrated their ability to get the job done.
And they get the job done, as we know by now, by smothering the game.
You may have seen colleague John Muller’s possession territory visualisation this week — the one that demonstrates exactly how good City are at dominating basically all of the areas on a pitch that it’s possible to dominate.
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These graphics are based on passes per zone, so it stands to reason that City don’t boss their own corner flags, because why would they use the ball in an area so far from the opponents’ goal? And then when it comes to the opposition penalty area, their opponents are usually going to have time to make passes on top of goal kicks and things like that.
And look at how it compares to other teams in the Premier League. It turns out that City are the only ones in the 20-strong division to boss ‘Zone 14’ — aka, the little square of turf outside the opposition penalty area containing the ‘D’.
“During the 1990s and early 2000s, statistical data showed that successful teams, such as the World Cup-winning team of France or 1999 Champions League winner Manchester United, had a better performance in Zone 14, as it was the key area which produced the vast majority of passing assists,” according to Spielverlagerung, a website dedicated to football tactics.
John then produced a follow-up graphic, such was the interest in the original across Twitter and Reddit.
This one showed that, in fact, City’s domination of Zone 14 was contested, meaning it is a zone where teams have more than 45 per cent possession but less than 55 per cent. It stands to reason, as a lot of City’s play goes down the sides anyway.
Which is why some of the blue zones City did not conquer on the first version soon turned yellow, too. The ones by their own corner flags, for a start, but most importantly, the two flanks of the opponents’ penalty area. Other teams, including Arsenal and Manchester United, can claim one side or the other of the other team’s 18-yard box, but only City have both.
Then you see last night’s Brentford game and it’s easy to remember why.
Look at the penalty that led to City going 1-0 up, for example.
Raheem Sterling got himself into that area and expertly drew a foul, which wouldn’t necessarily contribute towards this graphic, but when he ended up back inside that zone a few moments before half-time and cut the ball back, it’s a little surprising they don’t outright dominate these zones.
Think about those days where the opposition sit especially deep, and don’t seem to mind if City get as far as those zones, and Jack Grealish, say, is able to stand up his man and play the ball back towards Joao Cancelo to put the ball to the other side. If Riyad Mahrez has snuck around the back, he might pull the ball down and cross it, or head it back across, and you have another way that City establish themselves inside the opposition box.
It was Mahrez who gave an early indication that the City players were carrying out Pep Guardiola’s very specific requests here, the ones which change from game to game to help his team establish themselves — like they do in every game, no matter who they’re playing.
“We have to be alert, make a lot of rhythm,” he said beforehand. “If the ball is out, the ballboys have to be ready. If they are not, we have to be ballboys.”
And it was Mahrez in the second minute who ran after a loose ball to grab it and take a quick throw-in.
Brentford fight for these things, they stop you having options to throw to, to stop you getting a stranglehold on things.
They do it when the ball’s at your feet, too, which is why City looked stymied for much of the first half. A bit like how Southampton have managed two draws against them this season: two forwards stopping the balls in to Rodri, with an energy in the midfield that maintained pressure from behind to further discourage those kinds of passes, as well as keeping sufficient players back too.
“I thought we were good last time against them (a 1-0 home defeat just after Christmas) and I thought we were good again, defensively,” Thomas Frank said afterwards.
Brentford coach Frank also explained how he instructed his side to work hard down City’s right, because they knew a cut-back would mean a Kevin De Bruyne cross, and they wanted to double up on Mahrez, too.
So it was never quite as comfortable as the pre-match predictions for a home match against a side facing a sixth straight defeat would have suggested, even if Brentford were hamstrung by the fact they had no strikers available to start the game. It’s hard enough keeping City at bay without having any proper outlet for counter-attacks, especially when your stand-ins get themselves caught offside repeatedly — as moonlighting winger or wing-back Sergi Canos did last night.
City’s passes per zone against Brentford
Brentford didn’t exactly threaten to score but they did have a few chances after half-time to get in behind City. Then, just when they were about to bring on Yoane Wissa with 20 minutes left to push for an equaliser, they conceded the second.
That’s the other way City dominate you. OK, it was a David Raya mistake, but it was a bit like those Alisson ones at Anfield last season, where the goalkeeper certainly wasn’t helped by the City players blocking off his angles.
It was a tough game. Guardiola’s man of the match? John Stones.
“We discussed the zones (to exploit) yesterday and John Stones understood perfectly, and thanks to him we could start to smell a little bit more the chances,” he said.
It was Stones, nominally playing right-back, who played the incisive passes, which was important in a game where Rodri was largely off-limits. It was Stones who “drove the ball perfectly to (Christian) Norgaard” — Brentford’s holding midfielder.
“Today he was the most important player that we had,” Guardiola.
John Stones – yet another way to get the job done.
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