Kyle Walker has explained how he changed his position during matches to maintain balance at City. Photo: Getty Images/Michael Zemanek
Pep Guardiola has retrained three more players to play in his inverted full-back system to compensate for John Stones' injury this season, giving Manchester City an extra secret weapon to turn matches their way benefit.
Stones has not played since the Community Shield more than six weeks ago and City's injury problems are mounting. But Guardiola's solution was to do practical work on the training ground rather than spend money on cover. As he mentioned this week, trying to get out of trouble «would have been chaos for the club and we would have gone bankrupt.»
Instead, he has now turned Manuel Akanji, Josko Guardiola and Kyle Walker into «inverted» full-backs , who move into the center of midfield and influence the game.
Walker's progress is perhaps the most interesting, just like the last time. Guardiola has been adamant this season that the veteran defender did not have the necessary skills to fill the role. Guardiol was signed in the summer for £77 million as a traditional centre-back but, like Akanji, has demonstrated his ability to switch to the left-back position.
The end result should strike fear into the Premier League and Europe's elite teams. It has never been easy to pick Guardiola's tactics, but he can now change this key position at the snap of his fingers, making it impossible for opposing coaches to track him. City had trailed West Ham and Red Star Belgrade in recent matches, but Guardiola's substitutions led his side to a 3-1 win.
“I think Pep is Pep. I think teams are coaching us, teams are finding a strategy for how they feel they're going to play or defend against us,” Walker said. «When we can build in different ways, I think it adds another tool to our toolbox that we can change mid-game, and it seems to work for us.»
«Early game Against West Ham we were playing with me on the wing and then suddenly he pulled us in and said Josko [Guardiol] and I were going in the middle. I feel that in the match against Red Star there are many players who can play in the center and on the wing. I think last year only John [Stones] could really do it.
“He put so much pressure on Manu [Akanji] at the beginning of the season, he’s doing it with me and Josko now. So he's not relying solely (as I think we did last year) on John coming in and creating an overload in midfield. He allows us all to do this.”
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In the matches of the last five days, the reaction from City has been immediate. On both occasions they scored a goal a couple of minutes after the restart and won both games 3–1. They also fell behind Sevilla in the UEFA Super Cup and eventually won on penalties.
Guardiola has spoken of his players being hungry to climb another mountain after last season's treble, and the same could be said by the manager himself, who is in his eighth season in the Premier League and still finds ways to win when Rival coaches are figuring out ways to challenge him.
«I think it's Coach,» Walker said. “It has a key ingredient. He knows the right time to let certain players go, bring players in, freshen things up here and challenge people here and there.
“He's got a great balance and how to do it and it seems to work. not only here, but in the number of teams he played for because he had so much success. I'm just following orders and listening to him and hopefully that will get us over the line.»
Guardiola will have to juggle his players again at Nottingham Forest at the weekend with Bernardo Silva injured, although Mateo Kovacic is the most is close to returning among its players who were eliminated from the game.
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