We all have a Pep Guardiola teamsheet that has provoked a particularly eyebrow-raising reaction, but his first Manchester City Premier League game against Sunderland in 2016 still stands out.
Aside from the fact that Aleksandar Kolarov was starting at centre-back, Guardiola had gone for Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva in midfield, and a front three.
The conventional wisdom was that you couldn’t do that in the Premier League, where variations on 4-2-3-1 had held sway for the previous decade. Fernandinho would be overwhelmed as the lone holding midfielder.
