Manchester City, which looks impeccable, really has no hidden dangers?
Liverpool won 2-0 away to Arsenal in midweek, narrowing the gap between the top two in the Premier League table to just one point. Public opinion exclaimed: "The suspense is completely back!" This may be the most exciting and fierce title battle in the history of the Premier League. "But has the Red Army been more favored? Not necessarily, at least in the odds offered by the bookmakers, the leader Manchester City is still ahead of the Reds. In addition, by the way, the odds of winning the Champions League are also at the top of the blue moon, and counting their FA Cup tasks, Guardiola's team still has the opportunity to complete the great cause of the "treble".
But then again, is it necessarily the strongest to be favored by bookmakers? Is there any possibility that Manchester City will "overturn the ship in the gutter" and self-destruct the future? Judging from the performance, the defending Premier League champions have indeed played to new heights this season, and the lack of fronts has made it perfect, and many times people feel that there is no way to crack it. But pay attention, in the past week, Blue Moon has already happened two things that people will feel a little wrong, one is that they were forced to draw 0-0 by Crystal Palace without substitutions, and the other is that Guardiola cried out before last week's Champions League game that "we are few". And these two points point to the same hidden danger: the current Manchester City squad may be "thin", pointing to a set of people and horses to use hard may be overdrawn in advance.
A week ago, when Guardiola said he didn't have enough manpower against Sporting Lisbon, most people probably thought the Spanish coach was telling a joke. What if the first leg is a 5-0 away win, and what about returning home with one or two missing? Not so easy to qualify? This is true of victory or defeat, but what the Manchester city commander said is not a fabrication. With Walker suspended, Cancello, Díaz and Acre sick or injured, "we only have 14 players to play" means that City currently have only 18 "first-team players".
Is that a little too small? According to the usual impression, the Premier League blue moon is a bright star, not only the main force has de Bruyne, Díaz and B seats, even if the bench is pulled out, it can often blind the eyes of the opposing fans. However, the impression flow is unreliable, and the specific analysis of the numbers is more telling: since the beginning of the season, Guardiola has used a total of 25 players in the Premier League, and one more in the Champions League, a total of 26, but this includes forward Ferran Torres, who has already transferred, and of course, there are left-back Mendy who is suspected of rape and has been banned by the club, who are no longer the fighting power of the Blue Moon.
There are also five youth team youngsters, Palmer, McCarty, Drap, Keich and Eagan Reilly. The top 4 played only 160 minutes in the Premier League, and Riley only played the second leg against Sporting Lisbon in the absence of defenders and "victory is decided", so it is basically certain that Guard Guarda will not regard them as "a force that can be activated at an important stage". As for substitute goalkeepers Carlson and Stephen, the 36-year-old has long belonged to the "water dispenser keeper", while the 26-year-old American will only appear in the absence of Ederson in addition to the domestic cup, and he can basically be regarded as a "reserve player" after only one starter in the Premier League and the Champions League this season.
Subtracting this minus that, the claim that the first team has a total of 18 people is completely corroborating. So isn't that too little? After all, "less and fine" is also a kind of thinking that some managers respect. We can compare this horizontally: title rivals Liverpool have used 27 players in the Premier League this season, just a little more than Manchester City's 25, but at the same time there are 22 people who can be called members of the Reds' first team, including Joe Gomez, Origi and Elliott, who have little playing time, who are actually capable of acting as substitutes or even as a top starter when needed.
Not only Liverpool, like Manchester City, take the team route, and Chelsea, whose firepower is more scattered, is also a "first team" of the 22ers. Of course, this can also be understood that the manager has different ideas, and it is entirely possible for The manager, who has won more honors, to play more tricks with "fewer resources", after all, they used a 1-point advantage to beat Liverpool's defending Premier League champions in the 2018-19 season, and the Spaniards only used a total of 21 players. However, note that the Blue Moon was 20 members of the first team plus 1 rookie Foden who was capable of playing the 12th man (3 starts and 10 substitutes), and now they are the choices other than the 18 people, or even no longer. This is definitely thinner in terms of lineup thickness from the human head.
Then there is the fact that people have to pay attention to the fact that Manchester City's boss's fan operation when they exchanged white rolls with Crystal Palace - the situation can not open Guardiola and there is no substitution, I don't know whether the Spanish coach is too convinced of his own established deployment, or he is starting to become "timid" again. The point is that Guardiola is not only not fond of substitutions this time, but he has been throughout the season. According to statistics, Manchester City has made a total of 57 substitutions in 29 league rounds this season, averaging only 1.97 substitutions per game, which is not only far less frequent than Liverpool (2.90), but also the lowest year since Guardiola took charge. In 2016-17, when he debuted in the Premier League, Guardiola's league substitutions averaged as high as 2.82 per game.
"When I wanted 5 substitutions (last September), I couldn't use up all 3 places, what did I think?" For the inconsistencies of Guardiola, the doubtful British media could not help but sigh. Some speculate that Guardiola is still timid, after all, he said after the game against Leicester last Christmas: "Sometimes the situation of the team, such as emotional instability, will create more opportunities for opponents." So I'm not the kind of coach who [likes to make frequent substitutions]. The Blue Moons won the game 6-3, but Guardiola only changed 1 person in the middle of the game, and it was after the opponent pulled three goals in a row to make the score 4-3, and the side scored another goal 5-3 to regain the "insurance".
So far, we can't say how much of a bad impact such a "small squad" and such a half-hearted adjustment will have on City's championship-winning cause, but what has been seen is that Blue Moon has not been able to show full firepower against Crystal Palace. They had good players like Sterling, Jesus and Gundogan on the bench, but the results were completely useless. Maybe Guardiola thinks it doesn't make much difference if you don't change people, so it's better to stay "stable". This cannot be said to be unreasonable, but it also vaguely makes people feel that the blue moon will suddenly lose its state and "can't hold up". After all, a total of 18 guns still seem to be a little less, there are still 9 rounds in the league, and there are still three levels in the Champions League.
Wen | Yan Yu
Edit | Peppery Soup