Aston Villa – Manchester City: No End In Sight To Pep’s Predicament (2-1)

Manchester City continued their drastic slump in form, with no solutions in sight, as Aston Villa easily found routes through. As Unai Emery brought his trademark medium block, spaces for Morgan Rogers grew as the game progressed.

Tactical analysis and match report by Joel Parker.

Two points from one another, both teams viewed Saturday as a win that could kick-start their domestic campaigns.

After going winless for eight games, it appeared Unai Emery had found a way out of the poor form with wins against Brentford, Southampton and RB Leipzig. A late collapse at Forest put them back to square one. It’s easy to highlight fatigue leading to the team becoming error-prone, but a Douglas Luis-shaped hole affects their ability to control games and the lack of pressing is not met with compactness further down the pitch.

Villa’s decline has been a surprise, although the documented mess at City tanks that in comparison. One win in eleven games is not Pep Guardiola-like in the slightest. In the process, Pep has chopped and changed to try and find a solution, but City has never looked as vulnerable when conceding territory on the transition, and weird choices in man/zonal coverage have seen holes consistently appear when defending the counter. Can either Spaniard find a solution to their problems against one another?

Emery made just the one change to his team that lost to Forest. Amadou Onana came into the midfield, replacing Diego Carlos. Leon Bailey returned to the squad following a hamstring injury.

Stefan Ortega replaced Ederson in the Man City squad, due to the Brazillian . . .