Pep Guardiola took advantage of Everton’s narrow marking all game long to give Man City a deserved win at the Etihad.
The Citizens made it three straight Premier League wins this afternoon after defeating Everton at home. They’ve also gone momentarily top of the league with Arsenal yet to play this Saturday.
Erling Haaland maintained his top form as he scored for the 11th game in a row for club and country, a run that started in the end of August. Both goals came in similar fashion as well, but more on that later.
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How did Man City beat Everton?
Taking advantage of Everton’s narrow marking
Pep Guardiola estimulated Manchester City to exploit the wings. There was a heavy emphasis on working the ball down both sides throughout the whole game and he wasn’t shy to let that on from the start.
David Moyes used his double pivot of James Garner and Idrissa Gueye to keep Phil Foden and Tijjani Reijnders quiet between the lines. Indeed, the City pair didn’t do a lot of damage under those circumstances, receiving the ball with their back to goal, looking to turn and play on.
At the same time, it offered the Citizens acres of space to work on the wings. Early on, Matheus Nunes was doing a lot of damage finding runners in behind to get crosses into the box or shots off. First with Foden projecting himself and later with Savinho who went through on goal but finished poorly.
Around the 25th minute mark, City started using Jeremy Doku in a similar manner. It’s actually strange it didn’t come sooner considering how much advantage he had over Jake O’Brien down the left.
Key stats:
- 19 shots
- 16 shots from inside the box (their most in a game across all competitions this season)
- 2.40 xG
- 4 big chances
- 71% possession
Looking for inwards through balls
The idea was the same nearly every time. Whoever was on the ball would open up the angle of his body signalling a wide pass, but at the last second someone on the wings would bomb forward and the pass would go inside.
Eventually, it was Phil Foden doing this and finding Nico O’Reilly completely free down the left. His cross met Haaland, who made it 1-0.
Five minutes later, Savinho received with a lot of room to operate – again due to Everton’s narrow marking, and in the left wing once more. He pulled it back to the Norwegian big man who scored his and City’s second.
Manipulating the Toffees’ backline
Both goals had similar scripts in the sense of coming from assists in the left wing and pouncing on the Toffees’ defence collapsing inside to protect the goal.
Haaland faked runs towards the goal both times and stayed back to have more space to fire home. Though the second wasn’t as good of a finish.
The header came from a more complex build-up. Foden dropped deep to escape Gueye’s tight marking, getting Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall onto him. Everton’s No.22 didn’t close him down and allowed the pass to happen.
Meanwhile, Doku also dropped deeper than usual – and inside, dragging O’Brien with him. That left the whole left corridor open for O’Reilly to burst into, since he was ahead of Iliman Ndiaye.
In the end, the Toffees’ suffered from the “short blanket dilemma”. They denied spaces down the middle, but that created room for City to operate in elsewhere – Pep Guardiola’s idea from the start. He basically had them on strings.
Still, Everton do deserve praise for playing a very competitive first 45 minutes. In that period, they even had the best chance in the game, with Beto failing to get on the end of an Ndiaye pass. That ended as the shot attempt with the highest expected goals value in the match (0.61 xG).
| 1st half stats | Man City | Everton |
|---|---|---|
| Possession | 68% | 32% |
| Shots | 9 | 3 |
| Big chances | 1 | 1 |
| Expected goals | 0.90 | 0.66 |
They were also surprisingly calm in the attacking half, not rushing into crosses or trying to finish the play as soon as possible.
After a terrible season opener against Leeds, Moyes’ men have played some interesting football as of late. And today they had to make do without their best player – Man City loanee Jack Grealish. All things considered, it was an honest performance.
In the end, Man City were just too much for them. When the game was even, it still felt like any burst from a winger (or a rare overlapping run from a full-back) would give them an edge. Took the Citizens a while, but in the end is what happened.
Savinho and Doku were getting very comfortable chances to run at defenders towards goal – sometimes already inside the box. The end product wasn’t always there, but eventually won them the game. It was Guardiola’s plan all along and it worked perfectly.