Manchester City: How Pep Guardiola should use his week off

With the prospect of  facing title rivals Chelsea looming on the horizon, Manchester City’s first full week rest with a full squad available for training is welcome. How will Pep choose to spend the time preparing?

Picture the scene. Work has been swamped for three months straight, with little more wiggle-room than a day to complete your deadlines with all resources available. Then, suddenly, it stops. Your boss comes in and announces you’ve got a week off and justice and hope aren’t dead in the world just yet. Your mind races, how will you spend this unforeseen 7 days? OK, so, make that 5 days as at least one will be required down-time following the customary night out on the lash.

I suspect bed would occupy a reasonably large amount of those freebie hours and the internet could well absorb much the rest, such is life. For Pep Guardiola this very situation, minus the expected hangover, has arrived at last in his new job at Manchester City. Not since the start of the season has Pep had an entire week with his full squad to prepare for a game. Fortuitous and timely, for league leaders Chelsea come to town next Saturday as the vacation comes to an all-too-abrupt ending.

For Antonio Conte and his high-flying side, this is just really another week. Unburdened by the rigors of midweek football, a gift left by his predecessor Jose Mourinho, Conte has been free to focus his attentions to the League and well, it shows. Further, and perhaps more clinically, Conte has had carte blanche to just go ahead and field the same side, week after week, in the same formation to witness the same results.

For Manchester City, things haven’t been that easy. The League is so important, yet the Champions League arguably just as much. One can’t be prioritized over the other and Pep knows it. But for the strength of City’s squad depth, they could be witnessing diminishing returns home and abroad rather than sitting quite comfortably near the top in both.

So it was that, while the Blues didn’t exactly have the most dominating of games at Turf Moor against Burnley last Saturday, though statistics did show otherwise, it was the three points that will surely have mattered the most. Resting John Stones and Ilkay Gundogan, while benching Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva, arguably four of City’s best players, was a gamble that could easily have blown up in Pep’s face but, instead, it paid dividends.

So here it is, Guardiola’s week to get things ready, and boy does he have a job on his hands. Chelsea hit the remarkable milestone of 10 hours of football without conceding a single goal. Since switching to three at the back, they’ve closed the door on opposition advances time and again yet remained strong and dangerous going forward. A resurgence from Eden Hazard has been the catalyst, and the Belgian has 7 goals and 1 assist in 13 appearances this season to date.

That’s not to say Pep, or City, don’t have reasons to be hopeful. Arguably Chelsea have looked suspect in their last few outings, in particular against Spurs where they had no answer to the high line coupled with intensity. Further, Conte’s greatest strength could well play to Pep’s advantage. There are no guessing games about who will play for Chelsea and where they will play. Their game is their game and their lineup will, by and large, be unchanged from previous outings. Compare and contrast to a Manchester City squad as fluid as the ocean and you see the potential, if it could only be realised.

That’s the key to Pep’s week off, figure out a way to break the Chelsea juggernaut down with the fullness of the squad at his disposal. How he will approach this is anyone’s guess, but it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where he resorts to three at the back. Such a system would certainly be an easy choice, indeed one made on many occasions previously, for Pep to fall back on to match Chelsea’s man-power in the middle of the park, but City have looked all too suspect going back this season to make this a realistic, or at least safe, option.

That said, I think it’s fair to suggest that Pep will field as strong an attacking side as he is able from the get-go. While Fernando’s recent stability has provided a key man to ease pressure on Fernandinho tracking back from central/defensive midfield, he doesn’t provide the same options going forward as De Bruyne, Silva or Gundogan, one of whom would need to be sacrificed to make room.

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It’s all looking so tight at the top, but as the big teams start to face each other, gaps will start to open up. As Pep gazes across the week ahead at unquestionably his biggest challenge since taking the reins at Manchester City yet, he would do well to make use of his time wisely to prepare. The time will go by much quicker than he thinks.