Despite Manchester City sealing consecutive wins in the Premier League with a convincing 3-0 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers, Gary Neville was critical of Pep Guardiola’s decision-making.
He called out the City manager for his constant rotation of the defence this season, accusing Guardiola of “tinkering” for the sake of it, as he didn’t want to win games in the same fashion he did last season.
Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast: “I said Pep’s just messing around a little bit. Sometimes great managers get bored winning the same way. City seem to be changing their back four every week. There is a lot of tinkering going on.”
It’s a wild assumption from Neville to suggest Guardiola doesn’t have a good reason to make changes to his defence, especially considering City have kept just two clean sheets in the Premier League since October.
They’ve conceded two or more goals in three of their last seven too, so the defenders haven’t been at their best. But Neville might be right to say there’s probably too much change to the backline.
Eight players have been used at centre-back (Ruben Dias, John Stones, Aymeric Laporte, Nathan Ake, Manuel Akanji, Kyle Walker, Rodri, Kalvin Phillips), five players have been used at left-back or left wing-back (Laporte, Ake, Sergio Gomez, Joao Cancelo, Phil Foden), and six players have been used at right-back or right-wing-back (Stones, Cancelo, Akanji, Walker, Cole Palmer, Rico Lewis).
City need consistency in defence to shut sides out on a regular basis, so Guardiola could do with a settled backline.
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