Unusually for a man whose Manchester City side are sitting 11 points clear at the top of the Premier League, Pep Guardiola must feel like he is surrounded.
City’s success as they chase a fourth league title in five seasons has served as a vindication of Guardiola’s playing style, grounded in the methods established by the great Johan Cruyff at Ajax and Barcelona.
Transporting his high-possession, high pressing methodology from Barca to Bayern Munich and now City has made Guardiola’s positional play one of the defining tactical methodologies of the age.
The other is the German gegenpressing style, crafted by innovators such as Wolfgang Frank and Ralf Rangnick and honed by the likes of Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel and Ralph Hasenhuttl.
Of course, you are very familiar with those names. Proponents of these tactics are everywhere. Guardiola’s nearest rivals in the table are led by a couple of them, while his closest rivals geographically recently joined the party.
City’s weekend opponents Southampton are under the Austrian Hasenhuttl, who Guardiola labelled as, “exceptional… one of the best [managers] in the league, by far” on Friday.
But why are so many disciples of this style so prominent in the Premier League and beyond?
“Because they are good,” Guardiola said, matter of factly. “They have a lot of quality. They prepare well in their process and methodology.
“They have common patterns, all of them. Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel, Ralf Rangnick, Ralph Hasenhuttl… yeah, all of them they are excellent managers.”
The most enticing thing about this methodology, these common patterns, is they can be anathema to the Guardiola blueprint when carried out to the letter.
The City manager's struggles against Klopp and Tuchel, specifically during their initial meetings in England, have been well documented, while Southampton’s deserved 0-0 draw at the Etihad Stadium last September was not the first time Hasenhuttl has effectively snared up the sky blue machine.
“They attack inside more than outside - not much switches of play and attack a lot,” Guardiola explained, detailing a playing style that quickly sounded like the polar opposite of his focus on width and constantly switching the angles of attack with lots of purposeful passes.
“They play the 4-2-2-2, all the players inside. Except a little bit Thomas Tuchel, [who] plays all the players in the pockets.
“They are all of them quite similar. They play quick, they are not teams that have patience to play.
“If they can attack with four or five passes, it’s better than 20 passes. Start right, finish on the right; start left, finish on the left.”
If Hasenhuttl is able to halt City’s 12-match winning streak in the league, he will likely become the latest coach presumed to have Guardiola’s “number”. The same label has been attached to Klopp and Tuchel at certain points.
Matches against teams steeped in the Germany school have proved tough examinations for Pep over the years, but a second successive becalming of Tuchel last weekend suggested the tide has turned. Liverpool needing the individual inspiration of Mohamed Salah to bail them out in a 2-2 draw with City at Anfield in October only adds to that impression.
There will be further scrapes to come, perhaps even imminently at St Mary’s, but City can be grateful that Guardiola was never operating from a standing start, having worked since his 2013 appointment at Bayern to learn about this deeply contrasting style first hand and come up with ways to counter the master counter-pressers.
“I learned a lot,” he said of his time at the Allianz Arena.
“It was an incredible experience for me to learn from their country, how good they are. It’s not a surprise [to see these coaches in the Premier League], all of them are exceptional managers.”
As those lessons continue to be learnt and put into practice, City can remain very grateful that they have a quite exceptional manager of their own.
Do you think Guardiola has cracked the code of the German style this season? Follow City Is Ours editor Dom Farrell on Twitter to get involved in the discussion and give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
