A study by The Athletic has shown that teams are starting to target Manchester City’s left flank this season, something that hasn’t been the case in previous years.

In graphs used by The Athletic in their study, it highlights that in the 2023/24 campaign teams are targeting their Left Flank, whereas in other years there was actually more focus towards the City right hand side.

With the new singing of Josko Gvardiol, who is naturally a Left central defender, in Guardiola’s system he is asked to play as a left back and defend wider areas than he is used to. This could be part of the reason teams are testing him defensively in wide areas.

A different set of graphs used by The Athletic in their study has shown that opposition teams are playing the diagonal ball into the left channel more than they have in previous years. In the 2023/24 campaign in the first eight games, that diagonal ball into the left channel has been played 29 times.

In comparison, in previous seasons inside the first eight games, that same pass had been played 11 times in the 2022/23 season, 16 times in the 2021/22 season, 16 times in the 2020/21 season, 10 times in the 2019/20 season and 11 times in the 2018/19 season.

This shows that teams are really looking to find joy out on that left flank against Manchester City, and have identified that area as somewhere to target to have the best chance of creating attacking chances.

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