Southampton 0-0 Manchester City Review

Premier League GW36

By no means was this match an easy performance to watch or a result to accept at full-time. Heading into it, a win was expected, and not by a small margin. But, as we’ve seen throughout this season with Manchester City, breaking down low blocks hasn’t been as easy as before.

Notable Stats:

• Southampton (A) was the 3rd highest field tilt (94.1%) that Manchester City have had in a Premier League match this season. Only behind Wolves (A) with 95.7% and Arsenal (H) with 94.9%.

• Manchester City had 38 box entries in the match against Southampton (A). Jeremy Doku provided 13 of them after he came on at halftime.

• Manchester City has kept a clean sheet in four of their last five matches. Not conceding from open play since the match against Crystal Palace (H).

• Manchester City are one game away (8) from matching their nine-game unbeaten PL run from the start of the season.

• Manuel Akanji has now completed his first start and full 90 minutes since February. Rico Lewis has now played 3,000 minutes across all competitions this season.

Game Stats:

Southampton 0-0 Manchester City

• xG: 0.10 - 1.46

• xThreat: 0.5 - 2.9

• Possession: 28.3% - 71.7%

• Field Tilt: 5.9% - 94.1%

• Penalty Box Shots: 2 - 14

• Deep Entries: 2 - 28

• PPDA: 22.6 - 7.1

• High Turnovers: 0 - 7

If you want to stay up-to-date on individual player minutes, back four combinations, underlying numbers, and more, check out the live Google sheet below. 👇

This was an issue mentioned in the previous newsletter. For all the plaudits this change in system has rightfully gotten, even after the Southampton result, the inclusion of Haaland turns it upside down. So the question was always about how Guardiola would fit him back into the team. McAtee, Foden, and Lewis all come into the team. All of those players are good in small spaces around the box. The full-backs still created the width with Lewis and Gvardiol out wide.

I don’t think we can fault how well they worked to recover the ball, the team was ready and pounced on any turnovers. Leaving Southampton with very little. But there wasn’t a lot to do. They were not there in the first half to progress the ball that much, or pressing Manchester City too aggressively.

Guardiola alluded to this, catching him off guard in the post-match press conference. To defend so deep in their box from minute one. No space at all to play through. In the first twenty minutes, Southampton touched the ball five times outside their half. Across the entire first half, they attempted 135 passes compared to the 351 of Man City.

The issue, as you can see from the passing map below, for the team was penetrating the box, leaving most of their attempt to generate chances off crosses, which were fairly easily defended by Southampton. Lewis holding width on one side, Gvardiol on the other, not immediately arriving inside the box. Foden and De Bruyne are floating across the box, dropping deep to get on the ball, so the obvious player to defend is Haaland. Between three Southampton central defenders.

Guardiola wasted no time making the substitution at half-time, with Jeremy Doku coming on for James McAtee. In the first half, Manchester City players had five dribble attempts, in the second half, Jeremy Doku himself had nine. Instantly giving the team an outlet, a way into the opposition box, and most importantly, creating space for other players. Below is the passing map from the second half.

Against Southampton, Jeremy Doku had more successful dribbles (5), chances created (3), and duels won (8) than did James McAtee, Rico Lewis, and Phil Foden combined. It's a product of not having the best passers centrally to find him isolated and not having the best movement around him from midfielders/full-backs. But next season, I'd like to see Jeremy Doku provide more shots and crosses cutting inside. His shots per 90 are down from 3.11 last season to 1.50.

In this match, he did a good job of drawing in two Southampton players before releasing it to De Bruyne/Gvardiol on top of the box. Both struggled to take advantage of that space/time on the ball. Last season, Gvardiol looked much more comfortable in those spaces, crossing or taking a shot. De Bruyne uncharacteristically overhits his crosses to the back post from those spaces. In addition, there weren’t many times that the midfielders (Kovacic/Bernardo) were ready to shoot outside the box, should either Gvardiol or De Bruyne pass it across. Everyone was in a rush, and nobody was on the same wavelength.

As mentioned at the beginning of the newsletter, struggling against low blocks has been an issue for Manchester City throughout the season. Wolves (A) required a late set-piece winner, Nottingham Forest (A) kept them out until scoring a winner late in the match, and picking up a draw against Crystal Palace (A) was hard work to break down.

Everton (A), the team struggled to find the breakthrough goal for the majority of the match before scoring two late goals. Newcastle (A) were well prepared, dropping into a back five for most of the match and holding City to a draw. Arsenal (H), down to 10 men, sat deep and were seconds away from keeping all three points. Liverpool (H) had their box entered all game long, especially by Jeremy Doku, as they desperately defended their box for most of the match, and Manchester City couldn’t find a way to score.

All of these matches have slight differences in setup and quality between the teams, but in general, breaking down a team prepared to sit deep defending their box for long periods has been tough to handle this season. None of them has been easy. No Rodri to sit deep, organise the team, and pull the opposition block around with his passing. Less than ideal players crossing the ball out wide in Lewis and Gvardiol.

Against Southampton (A) was the most crosses Manchester City has attempted in a single PL match this season (44). Second is Wolves (A) with forty. Those two matches are top three for most passes and carries into the penalty area by the team this season. There was no shortage of attempts to get into the opposition box, and they succeeded in doing that.

No shortage of shots against Southampton (26), but that was their lowest percentage of shots on target this season (15.4%). Fourteen of those shots were blocked, again, the most by an opposition team against City this season. It was one of their lowest npxG per shot of the season, with 0.07. As a comparison, it was 0.19 against Crystal Palace (H) and Ipswich Town (A).

In the end, it wasn’t enough with the best chances coming from corners (Akanji x2) and the cutback from Doku to Bernardo inside the box, which was saved. Savinho had a good chance late in the match, and Nico O’Reilly couldn’t get a shot off for another cut back inside the box.

In the first half, the fault lay with the setup from Manchester City and the tempo they played with on the pitch. In the second half, they created enough openings but didn’t take one of those chances.

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Moving Forward

Next up for Manchester City is the FA Cup Final against Crystal Palace. The match will take place on the 17th of May at 16:30 (UK). Chance for them to end a difficult season with silverware. For De Bruyne to leave on that high note. For Crystal Palace to win the first trophy in their club’s history.

Now, for the next match, we’re going to see how well Manchester City have learned from this performance, as there is no doubt Crystal Palace will defend as well as Southampton deep in their box. They’re going to add much more threat in transition. City cannot afford to concede goals in the final.

We know that next season, Rodri is back, so you’ll have someone in midfield to organise the attack, dictate how they’ll break down the opposition block. It’s not their strength, but Kovacic and Bernardo struggle with this, and it’s a key reason why the team hasn’t had much success in these matches this season.

Reijnders and Gibbs-White have been linked heavily, the former will get into the box to score goals from cut-backs, the latter is excellent at making runs beyond the winger to create space around the final third. Something we’ve lacked from the midfield this season. Florian Wirtz is a top target to replace Kevin De Bruyne, that’s your game changer, you look for a bit of magic in these games. The likes of Cambiaso, Wesley, and Livramento, linked as full-backs, are all players who will improve the deliveries into the box from different angles. If the club does good business, the team will have the tools to win these matches much more comfortably next season.

In the meantime, we’ve got an FA Cup Final to win next weekend and no transfer window in between. It doesn’t need to be all of them, but players like Marmoush, Savinho, and Doku are requirements against Crystal Palace. To a lesser extent, bringing back Josko LCB and O’Reilly LB to make it easier to shift the ball across the back line will help. Even if you don’t have the perfect midfield to pull around the opposition, you need to have players dynamic 1v1 and those willing to make runs into the box.