West Ham manager David Moyes was refreshingly open and honest when asked why his side struggled to cope with Manchester City last weekend.
On the face of it, City eased to a comfortable 2-0 win thanks to Erling Haaland. The striker's athleticism and ruthless finishing earned both of City's goals, as he proved how he can improve an already brilliant attacking set-up.
But as Moyes rightly pointed out after the game, it wasn't Haaland that made City so hard to play against — it was how Pep Guardiola positioned full-backs Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo. Both pushed into the centre of the pitch to form a narrow midfield trio with Rodri, sitting ahead of a defensive two and an attacking five. The aim of the tactic is to guard the centre of the field against counter-attacks — West Ham's favoured route to goal. As Moyes explained, it achieved exactly that, while also creating more space out wide for Phil Foden and Jack Grealish to attack.
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"It caused us a different problem, they outnumbered us in midfield, we couldn't get on the ball," Moyes said.
"When we brought players in to cope they played to [Jack] Grealish or [Phil] Foden and got some width.
"We hadn't prepared for that because we hadn't really seen it but was really difficult tactically to deal with it. Over the years they've always brought one full-back in, [Oleksandr] Zinchenko last year, the two of them played there today and outnumbered us."
On that last point, Moyes got it both right and wrong. Inverting full-backs is nothing new for Guardiola's City; he trialled it for short periods in both 2020/21 and 2021/22 with Joao Cancelo, and even as far back as 2016/17 with Pablo Zabaleta.
In the opening two games of last season he had Benjamin Mendy attempt to play the role in the 1-0 defeats to Leicester and Tottenham in the Community Shield and Premier League respectively, but swiftly abandoned the idea.
But Moyes is right that while he's been at City, Guardiola has never really 'inverted' both of his full-backs at the same time. However, he often did so when managing Bayern Munich, with Philipp Lahm and David Alaba often playing the roles.
By his his final season in Bavaria, Guardiola's side were playing in a 2-3-5 formation, with the full-backs tucked in either side of the holding midfielder and the two No.8s pushing up into the half-spaces between the striker and wingers to form a front five. At the London Stadium on Sunday, that is pretty much exactly what City did.
The system is therefore not new, but in the context of this City team it is unusual. We shouldn't expect City to play use it every week though.
It is a system well-suited to breaking down teams defending in a low-block who look to counter-attack through the centre of the pitch. The presence of extra bodies in the centre of midfield does three things: it creates a numerical advantage in a key area of the field; the 'open' body position of the inverted full-backs creates more passing lanes for the centre-backs, aiding build-up play; and it guards against counters.
It also tricks the opposition into packing their midfield in response, thus creating more room out wide for the wingers to attack.
The creation of more passing lanes in the centre of the field also makes it easier to play through high-pressing teams, although it won't always work. For example, Guardiola will never use this approach against Liverpool, as tucking the full-backs into the centre of the pitch would leave nobody to deal with the likes of Mohamed Salah and Luis Diaz on the wings.
Also, though Walker did an excellent job on Sunday, he's unlikely to win a midfield battle against the likes of Thiago Alcantara, or other elite midfielders.
It's possible that Guardiola will use the 2-3-5 system more than ever before at City this season, but don't be fooled into thinking it's a new scheme he's just come up with. He's had it up his sleeve for years and has been waiting for the right time to use it.
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