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This Manchester City team is so unconventional in the way they are set up to attack.
Players are in positions in name only. They have a ‘fake’ number 9 that falls deep and travels through the team to receive the ball.
They have ‘fake’ midfielders in Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva who push towards the positions of center forward and ‘fake’ defenders, mainly Joao Cancelo, but sometimes both, who move to midfield.
It’s a system designed to outnumber the opposition in key areas of the field. It’s ‘now you see me, now you don’t see me’ for opponents.
City beat Borussia Monchengladbach 2-0 in the Champions League and says a lot about Pep Guardiola’s mentality that he was disappointed that they didn’t win by a greater margin.
David Moyes has had a week to prepare the West Ham players for Saturday’s game. Moyes is not averse to making special plans for special players. Against Aston Villa, he played two right backs, Vladimir Coufal and Ryan Fredericks, to tie up Jack Grealish and it worked like a charm.
The problem on Saturday is that City have so many special players! Watching them against Mönchengladbach, Moyes will have noticed how left-back Cancelo moved smoothly towards midfield.
This is what happens when you don’t push high against City.
Arsenal forgot to do that last weekend and could have lost 3-0 in five minutes.
If you don’t press high, you let City play its way and it becomes a very long 90 minutes. The two goals against Borussia came as a result of Cancelo’s delivery to the area.
That’s one of City’s main strengths, but Moyes could turn into a weakness on Saturday. West Ham can’t just sit back and admire this magnificent City machine that rotates positions and dominates possession. They have to enjoy the challenge and believe that they may be the ones to deny them a twentieth consecutive victory.
Moyes will likely be sitting deep next to him on Saturday, given their success in doing so. He has a solid defense, plus Tomas Soucek and Declan Rice up front. With those two providing protection, there are every reason to expect there will be times when West Ham gets the ball back.
Soucek is a fighter, no one has won more aerial balls than him this season. Rice is also one of the best tacklers and interceptors in the Premier League. When West Ham wins the ball, the first few passes they make are incredibly important.
Cancelo’s positioning is so unconventional and it is impossible to be in the center of the field and covering the side at the same time. That will be the area to target.
If possible, West Ham should place precise passes in the channel so that its willing running backs like Michail Antonio, Jesse Lingard, Jarrod Bowen or Said Benrahma will chase after them. Forwards have to spy on that space and be ready to enter it immediately.
Even then, it won’t be easy to score as they will have to beat goalkeeper Ederson, who is in good shape. But this is how West Ham can look to hurt the City.
This is a meeting between two applicants for the Manager of the Year award.
Moyes has done an outstanding job and it is surely a formality that the West Ham board is rewarding him with a long-term contract.
His skill in the transfer market stands out. Moyes refused to pay Burnley £ 50m for James Tarkowski and instead turned to Craig Dawson on loan from Watford.
You could say that Dawson, playing alongside Angelo Ogbonna and Issa Diop, has been as important to West Ham recently as the £ 65m Ruben Dias has for City. Aaron Cresswell, on the left-back, is one of the Premier League’s best ball crossers, while Coufal is wonderfully aggressive as a right-back.
Moyes will back up their defense, alongside Soucek and Rice in front of them, to do a job at City, but this is the ultimate test for any team and coach.
Guardiola’s City are the great innovators and they can leave you in a spin. West Ham will have to be smart if it wants to get a positive result at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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