Pep Guardiola Really Messed Up Against Brighton, And That *Never* Normally Happens

A footballing event as rare as rocking horse shit, but much easier to digest.

Ok so, first off, what’s wrong with this picture?

Actually, I’ll help you out here. What’s wrong with this picture?

Manchester City have committed all 10 outfield players to defending an area occupied by only 4 members of the Brighton team. An almost comical lack of organisation that’s left them wide open on both flanks, and applying no pressure to Jan Paul van Hecke who has means, motive, and opportunity to hurt them.

Weirder still though, is this…

Manchester City have committed all 10 outfield players to defending an area occupied by only 4 members of the Brighton team. An almost comical lack of yada yada etc... and Pep Guardiola is looking directly at it.

But that’s still not apex of the weirdness! Look at the top-left-hand corner.

Manchester City have committed all 10 outfield players blah blah… Jan Paul van Hecke is going do them… and so on and so forth… but there’s still like half an hour left, and they have the lead. Pep Guardiola is looking directly at a really, really serious problem, and has both the time and the advantage to fix it.

But he doesn’t. (Also, fuck me, how big and white are Fabian Hürzeler’s trainers???)

Instead, he sticks to his guns, and it happens again…

… and again

… and again

Until inevitably…

This is the pass that puts Karou Mitoma in to cross for Brighton’s equaliser. Manchester City’s entire outfield team are, to recap, marking a small area that the opposition aren’t even contesting, leaving a spate of yawning chasms on the flank and in-behind, and not putting one hint of pressure on a player clearly looking to hit them in these areas. And that was the 5th time in 10 minutes that it happened.

Pep Guardiola is good at football. I don’t mind sticking my neck out on that one. He basically killed centre-forwards as a serious concept when he was at Barcelona, he did something mad with Philipp Lahm at Bayern (I forget what), and you’d never heard the term ‘box midfield’ until he started bullying John Stones to get in amongst it.

He’s good! At football! But this is about as bad an error in judgment as you will ever see him making. He hasn’t been suddenly caught out, he hasn’t been the victim of some rouge misfortune, he is looking directly at a clear and repeating problem and somehow not seeing it.

Some context, your honour: This was a scenario brought about by the introduction of Carlos Baleba. In the first half, Manchester City were about as in charge as a row of parked Teslas. But the introduction of the Cameroonian completely wrestled control of the midfield away from them, and suddenly gave Brighton time on the ball in the above areas.

The contrast in Jan Paul van Hecke’s passing map (thanks Opta!) shows how the pattern of the game completely changed after Brighton got a handle on it.

This is a graphic representation (and a really funny one if you’re not a City fan trolololol) of how games can change. But you knew that already! Every game you’ve ever seen has changed at some point. What makes this interesting is that it changed in a way that utterly confounded the greatest manager on the planet, while looking reasonably obvious to most people watching on TV. And that’s really interesting, isn’t it??

I once read on a Blockbuster video cassette that said ‘to err is human’ (the rest of it said something like ‘to rewind is divine’? I’m not sure) and the grand passing symphony conducted by Jan Paul van Hecke here is a reminder that Pep is, in fact, still fallible.

Is he losing his touch? No. Are Man City in big trouble this season? Probably not. Is the whole club “clapped”? I’ve actually got no idea what the correct usage of that word is, sorry!

Anyway, to close, you can bet with a grim predictability that Guardiola will get the next 20 big in-game decisions absolutely spot on… but that only makes it all the more notable when he doesn’t.