How Manchester City climbed the mountain: From regaining control to the rise of Cherki

AFC BournemouthArsenalAston VillaBrentfordBrighton & Hove AlbionBurnleyChelseaCrystal PalaceEvertonFulhamLeeds UnitedLiverpoolManchester CityManchester UnitedNewcastle UnitedNottingham ForestSunderlandTottenham HotspurWest Ham UnitedWolverhampton WanderersScores & ScheduleStandingsFantasyThe Athletic FC NewsletterPodcastsPL Title Race Oli SCARFF / AFP via Getty Images Share articleManchester City are top of the league again, for the first time since the opening weekend of the season, and after months of talk about Arsenal being champions in waiting. There is still a lot of the race to go, though, and City’s struggles in front of goal in their 1-0 victory against Burnley means they and Arsenal are level on goal difference, with City ahead on goals scored. The pressure will be on Arsenal now, but by the same token, they could be six points clear of City by the time Pep Guardiola’s side play another league game. But City’s momentum continues. After beating Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final, Liverpool in the FA Cup, Chelsea, Arsenal and now Burnley in the league, they could yet win a domestic treble, the second of the Guardiola era. For much of the season that would have felt like absolute fantasy. This is how they got here. After City beat Nottingham Forest in December, Guardiola was in such a good mood that he opened up on a variety of different topics. After saying ‘energy, energy, energy’ was the biggest thing that his team recovered during last summer’s Club World Cup, and that tactics and everything else is ‘bulls***’ in comparison, he explained why his team had struggled at the beginning of the season. “Still we were knowing the best way to suit the players,” he said. “Sometimes you need time. Talk with the players and say, ‘The way we press here we are not comfortable,’ and ‘Erling (Haaland) is not good going to the half spaces’, or, ‘it’s too risky’ or whatever. Managers are not magicians. Sometimes you have to discover the way the team plays.” Part of the process of restoring the energy that City had lost was to bring in Pep Lijnders as Guardiola’s assistant, and he helped redesign the team’s press over the course of the summer and the early weeks of the season. It was an aggressive approach that required full-backs to cover huge distances to close down opponents, which in turn leaves centre-backs more exposed than in most set-ups. It took some getting used to, as Guardiola hinted at. After thrashing the doomed Wolves 4-0 on the opening weekend, City were played off the pitch by Thomas Frank’s Tottenham and then had no answer to Brighton’s second-half push. They bounced back from that by beating Manchester United 3-0 and came within a whisker of a backs-against-the-wall victory at Arsenal, after Haaland scored early and City dug in, only for Gabriel Martinelli’s late equaliser to stop them. Performances like that, on the back of signing Gianluigi Donnarumma in the summer, sparked talk of major tactical changes by Guardiola. City had less possession than United in that derby victory and they parked the bus at Arsenal — were City moving away from the classic Guardiola approach? The evidence was getting hard to ignore towards the end of the year. In November, City beat Bournemouth, Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool in thrilling fashion, suffering periods without the ball but striking decisively on the break. They had less possession than their opponents in each of those games and by that point, Haaland had scored 14 of their 23 league goals, and seemed to be thriving in the spaces that opened up when City were pushed back. It was easy to believe that Guardiola had moved away from his safety-first approach and had embraced the new-look Premier League, with teams playing more directly and focusing heavily on duels. It was fun, but it was flawed. City lost 2-1 at Newcastle despite having plenty of chances — the kind of game that can happen if you let the other team have the ball. From 2-0 up they were pegged back at 2-2 by Leeds, only for Phil Foden to win it late on, and despite being 5-1 up against Fulham, they let it get back to 5-4. It was surely unsustainable. Then they beat Real Madrid in an end-to-end game. This was how things were going for City up until Christmas; they were picking up thrilling wins, but not necessarily convincing ones, and they would throw in the odd disappointing defeat like the one at Newcastle, or the 1-0 reverse at Aston Villa at the end of October. City were only two points off top, but Arsenal had looked more assured. Everything went downhill after that win at Forest. City drew three matches in a row against Sunderland, Chelsea and Brighton, ending up six points behind Arsenal. Then they were utterly hopeless in defeat against United at Old Trafford, and after beating Wolves again they let a two-goal lead slip to draw 2-2 against Tottenham. That game really shone a light on a recurring issue: they kept dropping off hugely after half-time, seeing their opponents dominate matches. In fact, they had not scored in the second half of a league game since the Forest game at Christmas. And yet for all of City’s struggles in that period, they ended up gaining a point on Arsenal, cutting their lead to five points, with a game in hand, as the Gunners wobbled too. Guardiola, in conversations with other managers, was still convinced that City will win the title. It turns out Guardiola was never embracing the more chaotic approach after all. If City were having less of the ball and looking more thrilling, it was because their new players were bedding in and trying to get to grips with what Guardiola really wants. “I know Pep, and I know that his ideas don’t change much,” Bernardo Silva said at the time. “He knows what brought us success. He knows the way we have to play to win titles. I don’t think it’s going to change a lot in terms of that.” Guardiola himself confirmed it: “I will fight until the last day as a manager for that concept,” he said in a press conference, of playing out from the back. In the New Year, City started to look much more like what Guardiola wants, albeit usually in the first half, before the second-half jitters kicked in. When Haaland was rested/dropped for a game against Wolves in January, Guardiola went back to the 4-2-2-2 shape that he had used at the end of last season, when Haaland was injured. They won at Anfield, improbably given their record there (one win since 2003, and that was behind closed doors), despite dropping off in the second half again. Bernardo Silva’s fighting spirit and Haaland’s penalty capped a stunning turnaround, and that seemed to spark them into life, but the soft underbelly never really went away: a 2-2 draw against Forest is the kind of result a title-chasing City were never previously capable of. They were dumped out of the Champions League 5-1 on aggregate by Real Madrid and they drew 1-1 at West Ham, on a night when Guardiola seemed to realise the game was up. He also explained why Rayan Cherki had not started there, or in other games. “It’s sometimes for the balance,” Guardiola said of leaving the Frenchman out at West Ham. “We learned in the beginning (of the season) that when we played Erling in that moment with Jeremy (Doku) or Cherki, that we do not have the stability that teams in the Premier League have to have.” One big spark in City’s title push was the Carabao Cup final victory against Arsenal, where they looked a level above their opponents. A four-man non-press, where City’s forwards formed a line and waited for the Gunners to find a pass, knowing that their centre-backs — and cup goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga — had a comparatively limited passing range. Since then, Cherki has taken over. The return of control and Guardiola’s 4-2-2-2 set-up seemed to squeeze Cherki to the margins, despite his creative output and joie de vivre. Thanks to dazzling performances against Liverpool and Chelsea at the start of April, though, the 22-year-old found himself not just as the creative fulcrum of the City team, but the subject of debates about the direction that English football is heading in, with his flair considered an antidote to the drudgery of the football played elsewhere. It felt fitting, then, that he popped up with a beautiful goal against Arsenal on Sunday — though Guardiola later said he did not do enough in the game after that. The two seem poles apart philosophically — when Cherki assisted Foden with a rabona earlier in the season, Guardiola urged him to learn from Lionel Messi’s ‘simplicity’. In a recent interview with France Football, Cherki said the worst thing that somebody could say about him is that he plays simply. Their relationship is fascinating, and Guardiola often appears at the end of his tether with the youngster, but he recognises, finally, that his creative talents are worth indulging. Especially if Haaland is back in the goals. He had scored five goals in 20 matches between Christmas and the last international break, but since then he has five in four, feeling refreshed as a result of longer rests between games, with City out of Europe. That could be a significant silver lining: as Arsenal prepare for two gruelling games with Atletico Madrid, City can rest and prepare for their final five league matches, and potentially two in the FA Cup. If they can win three trophies this season, it would be one of Guardiola’s finest achievements. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms