How Kevin De Bruyne Changed The Season For Man City
Kevin De Bruyne made a spectacular comeback from injury for Man City. But while the rest of the Premier League will be hoping there's still some rustiness to shake off, the Belgian's return instantly makes Manchester City a terrifying prospect.
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00:00 Alright, so I forget the exact number of minutes but it's the first game of the season, Man
00:04 City are away to Burnley, Kevin De Bruyne cannot continue and off he comes.
00:09 And over the weeks and months between then and now Pep Guardiola has experimented massively
00:14 with this Man City side, trying to fill that big ginger hole.
00:17 That sounded awful.
00:18 Now he did loads of different things so if you are a Man City fan and you think I'm missing
00:22 some stuff or I'm oversimplifying some stuff then yes I am to an extent.
00:26 But we've only got so much time, the easiest way of looking at it is he brought in Julian
00:30 Alvarez for De Bruyne so he could still attempt to get the whole three box three thing going
00:35 from last season.
00:36 And if you don't know what that is, basically someone steps out of the back four to form
00:40 a sort of box shaped four midfielders in the middle and that's where you get controller
00:44 games.
00:45 Now last season this was brilliant because you had Stones and Rodri at the base of it,
00:48 two players who can dribble, who can pass, who were just excellent on the ball, who you
00:52 would never want to press if you could possibly help it and then forward you had De Bruyne,
00:56 probably the best player in the Premier League, then either Silva or Gundogan who offered
01:00 a roaming goal threat.
01:02 But this season though, John Stones has been injured and Gundogan has left and De Bruyne
01:06 has also been injured so it's ended up looking like this.
01:10 Which is obviously still good enough to win you loads of games in the Premier League but
01:14 Manchester City have just not looked as just dangerous, as venomous, as unbeatable as they
01:20 did last season and the reason is because this core component of what they were doing
01:24 was made up of players who weren't quite as good at it.
01:28 But of course when you've still got a defence this good and the most lethal striker in the
01:32 world it'll keep you within touching distance of the top and the plan was obviously just
01:36 to hang in there until they got De Bruyne back and then unleash themselves upon the
01:41 many mortals threatening their crown.
01:45 I've come off my caffeine break this week by the way, don't know if you can tell.
01:48 Because they would even end up forming it with Kyle Walker moving across the way Liverpool
01:52 did with Alexander-Arnold and you can just, you can understand can't you the fundamental
01:56 differences in how you would try and control a game of football if everything is going
02:00 through John Stones or everything is going through Kyle Walker.
02:04 It's a bit like the difference between conducting some sort of massive orchestra with like an
02:08 experienced conductor versus like an Alsatian with a hammer tied to its paw.
02:12 But then of course something even terrible-er-er-er-er-er-er happened and Erling Haaland got injured.
02:26 Bye bye there he goes.
02:27 I'm going to have to get that back actually.
02:28 So now you've got to take Alvarez from here and play him up front and all of a sudden
02:32 Pep found that he had a real problem with how he was going to form his box so what he
02:36 did was he kind of stopped trying to do it.
02:39 So what they did and this is how they'd lined up against Newcastle was they went for a very
02:43 conventional by their standards 4-2-3-1.
02:46 So you've got Jeremy Doku on the left, Boden and Bernardo Silva kind of job shared this
02:51 role and then as the pivots you had Rodri and Kovacic.
02:54 And how this works is kind of weird right because you can't now form the box by having
02:58 a defender step out because you've got these two here but sometimes they still do form
03:03 the box albeit a different way and sometimes they form the box to get control of the midfield
03:07 which is what the box is for but sometimes they form the box purely to create space away
03:12 from the box.
03:13 So just to show you what I mean this is Man City's average positions against Newcastle.
03:20 It's one of those famous 2-5-3s you see all the time.
03:23 Now the thing is this is like average positions it's not ever what it looks like in the middle
03:27 of the game but the reason it's come out in this shape is because they were doing the
03:31 box but they were swinging the box, sounds weird, from side to side.
03:36 And you should be able to see the box in this graph like I can't physically see this I have
03:40 to put it on afterwards I think I'm pointing in the right place but there should be Boden,
03:43 Doku, Kovacic and Silva you should be able to see that is a full.
03:47 And how that works in practice is that obviously Boden and Doku they sort of come into the
03:51 centre Bernardo Silva drops into here forget Rodri he drops between the back three because
03:55 they spread out and basically what they do is they use this to make space.
04:01 That's a lot more compact than we're usually used to seeing this because they'd like to
04:05 spread out and what they do is they make this nice compact box but do it over one side of
04:12 the pitch and in doing so make loads of space this side for the full back on that side in
04:16 this case Kyle Walker to get all the way up to just do stuff.
04:21 And there's the first goal like look you can see here are the four players they are congesting
04:25 Newcastle United's defence all over this side of the pitch.
04:27 They play the one ball out to Walker who could practically be on a sun lounger there if he
04:31 wanted to be he puts the ball in and Bernardo Silva scores.
04:34 The thing is right if you're Newcastle or you're any team playing against Man City and
04:38 their best route to goal becomes crosses into the box you're probably quite content with
04:44 that because Bernardo Silva's goal is amazing but how many of them are you likely to concede
04:49 in a game.
04:50 So what Newcastle did and for about 60 or 70 minutes until one particular substitution
04:55 thought this was a really good way of disrupting a box midfield actually was they made their
04:58 midfield three so compact and put them really deep here.
05:02 The idea being that that effectively man marks these two players and then as a unit you press
05:08 out together onto the rest of the midfield cutting off all the passing lanes in the process
05:12 and allowing you to effectively chase Rodri back to his own goal.
05:16 And because Man City are kind of only really trying one side at a time that meant that
05:20 either Gordon or Almiron would drop back in to help out here and if anything did get through
05:24 because you're nice and compact the defence would happily step out and take the ball off
05:28 the other attackers case in point Favien Scherr scything through Jeremy Doku to get Newcastle
05:33 or equaliser.
05:34 But the thing is this isn't a video about how Newcastle valiantly defeated Manchester
05:39 City at the weekend it is about how Kevin De Bruyne pulled their pants all the way down
05:45 and how he did that was that City's fundamental problem was they could not really get the
05:49 ball into either of these two players in anything resembling a particularly dangerous position
05:55 and if we just bring back that graph that shows you the average positions and we change
05:59 it for after the substitution well you can just see he did not bother playing here because
06:04 there was no space instead he played there.
06:08 And this is why Pep Guardiola goes on about individuals so much because I can sit here
06:11 for hours and talk to you about systems and tactics and strategies and positions and how
06:15 they try to do this what makes the difference what turns this into actually winning football
06:20 matches is the players and the better the players you have the better the decisions
06:25 they make the more quality they are able to bring the more decisive they will be and the
06:30 more likely you are to win things like quadruples.
06:34 And I know people have made a big song and dance about the winning goal because it's
06:37 just this beautiful like perfectly weighted ball it's something that's easy to understand
06:42 from a perspective of what incredible technique only the best players in the world could do
06:46 that but it's the equaliser genuinely which I think is like that is something only a player
06:53 of Kevin De Bruyne's quality could do and it's dead easy to miss and it's dead easy
06:57 to put down to bad defending but when you break it down really slowly and you just see
07:01 the small bits I'll show you.
07:04 So you can see here Newcastle have been doing what they've been doing the entire game City
07:08 have formed their box this time slightly differently with Rodri at the base of it and they are
07:12 positioned directly in the middle of it.
07:14 Now they're not touch tight to De Bruyne and Doku but they are completely cutting out those
07:18 passing lanes they're not options and Miguel Almiron has even come across from the right
07:22 hand side to stop them just doing a little bouncer off Vardial into Doku here.
07:27 The ball comes out to Rodri and Longstaff does the correct thing he knows he can't get
07:30 a ball into De Bruyne so he presses onto him to force him even further back.
07:34 Now if you just look at Bruno Guimaraes here his job is to stop the diagonal pass between
07:39 Longstaff and Miley so if you just imagine here they're sort of directly stopping this
07:43 pass you also need to cut that one out as well but you can do that with one player that's
07:47 his job so he's just got to be mindful of what's going on around him.
07:50 This is where it all comes together right because instead of turning around and passing
07:54 the ball back Rodri attempts to dribble into the middle of Newcastle's midfield three.
07:59 They've got him this is what you're trying to bait the teams into doing.
08:03 He hasn't even fully evaded Longstaff and he's literally about to dribble into these
08:07 two other midfielders here this is a great opportunity for Newcastle to win the ball
08:11 back turn over and go and score a third so naturally Miley and Bruno are drawn towards
08:17 the ball.
08:18 As soon as that happens Kevin De Bruyne just has a little quick check to see what Miguel
08:22 Almaron's doing he's still occupied with Doku and then he just goes.
08:26 Takes a little half a step to his right and then goes all the way out to his left because
08:31 and it's so marginal there is no way Rodri can get the ball here but he can get the ball
08:37 here.
08:38 And just like that from like a really simple bit of movement and a five yard pass Kevin
08:42 De Bruyne has now done what Man City were not able to do for the entire preceding like
08:48 70 odd minutes he's got the ball between Newcastle's two defensive lines.
08:53 And when we talk about individual moments being what these players are supposed to bring
08:58 to games this isn't even a good chance.
09:01 99% of other players would either try to roll the ball out to one of the wider attackers
09:07 or like curl it around Scherr's body which would literally put it straight down the middle
09:12 of the goal.
09:13 But Kevin De Bruyne scores and he scores because he's a genius.
09:17 He literally did an interview with a German television channel immediately after this
09:21 game where he said that he deliberately tried to put it through Scherr's legs because he
09:26 knows as the last defender he's going to be trying to make his body bigger so there's
09:31 more chance of the gap being there when he hits the ball.
09:34 And if he can hit it through that gap between his legs he doesn't even have to put that
09:38 much power on it because it makes it that much more difficult for the goalkeeper to
09:41 react and if you just look frame by frame De Bravka doesn't react until it's travelled
09:47 half the distance to the goal.
09:49 Because of how quickly he takes that chance and because there's a defender in the way
09:52 he can't really telegraph that that shot's coming and because of the precision of it
09:57 he just doesn't really have any chance of getting anywhere near it.
10:01 It's like only certain players can do that and Kevin De Bruyne is one of them.
10:06 And for the winner Newcastle had obviously learned their lesson about that gap between
10:09 the midfield and the defence so they do sit 10 yards further back so De Bruyne doesn't
10:14 try and receive the ball in what would now be a really difficult position he just drops
10:19 all the way off to where the space is because if he's got space and he's got time it doesn't
10:23 really matter how close he is to the goal he's going to be able to do something with
10:27 it.
10:28 I have to tell you what an unbelievable pass that is.
10:31 Like I was broken, I'm a Newcastle fan I did not want that to happen but still it was just
10:36 like oh.
10:37 So yeah that's why Kevin De Bruyne being back for 30 minutes was terrible news for Newcastle
10:41 United but probably in the grand scheme of things much much worse news for literally
10:47 everybody else.
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11:42 time De Bruyne Adam 4 4 bye.