Thread by @city_tactics

City’s left side is the busiest area of any Premier League pitch this season. But is it working? 1/

This season City have focussed more attacks down the left, as opposed to the right or centre, in every single Premier League match. It was the same on Saturday vs Palace 2/

That’s no surprise with Grealish and Cancelo stationed on the left for the vast majority of the season so far. They’re excellent technical players who are likely to attract plenty of ball, especially in comparison to Walker and Jesus down the right flank who are more explosive 3/

Cancelo leads the league in touches, passes and carries. He is, in effect, the busiest player in the league. More pertinently, he sits 3rd in the league for touches in the attacking 3rd of the pitch. With Grealish sat in 4th
4/

All this data suggests that City are heavily reliant on the left side and as such you’d expect that area to be the creative hub of the team. Grealish leads the league in shot creating actions per 90 and is 2nd for key passes 5/

You’d expect City to be creating most of their goals from the left then? Not quite. Grealish has 2 assists in the league and Cancelo has 1. Cancelo’s came from a corner vs Chelsea. Grealish has 1 on the break vs Brighton and one going down the wing vs 10 man Arsenal 6/

City have scored 10 goals in open play that were created from the right wing in the league this season. They’ve only scored 5 created on the left 7/

Grealish has 1 goal in the league, while Cancelo has none. The output from the left flank doesn’t match the involvement.
I’ve written about Grealish previously and the challenges he faces playing left wing without a full back regularly overlapping 8/

https://twitter.com/city_tactics/status/1449040196125724681

With 2 right footers on the left we can see scenarios like this one on Saturday playing out. Grealish outnumbered and cutting back to play it to Cancelo who puts a cross in with the outside of his right foot 9/

Against a packed defence on Saturday, Cancelo was hitting a lot of over ambitious crosses and long shots. He seemed frustrated and it showed in his play 10/

Pep has tried to rectify the 2 right footers issue by playing Bernardo left 8 and asking him to underlap from a high starting position. We’ve seen it work well in other matches (below) but not on Saturday with De Bruyne playing higher and Palace affording City little space 11/

https://twitter.com/city_tactics/status/1437762921698930689

Following the red card and a re-shuffle at half time, Grealish moved inside with Foden shifting left. Rodri and Bernardo formed a double pivot and City looked a bit more dangerous. Eventually Cancelo shifted to the right. This might be a glimpse of the future 12/

At a similar time last season Pep changed things up, initially going to double pivot and wide full backs to shore up the defence before changing to wide wingers and a 3-2 build up that incorporated a hybrid fb/dm/am role for Cancelo 13/

We might see some elements of those set ups in the coming weeks. If we do, Oleks Zinchenko could be a key figure.
There’s a lot happening on the left at the moment but it’s currently high usage, low impact 14//

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