What the Premier League is all about: Manchester City not at their best, Brentford need a stopper

Another weekend has gone by and after the 25th round of the Premier League, the battle for the English title is a little more exciting again. In a new installment of our weekly feature on the action in the British Isles, we look primarily at Manchester City draw with Chelsea, and also briefly at Brentford’s embarrassing goals conceded.

Manchester City are on a roll after a poor end to 2023, winning ten games in a row. Yet at times it was clear in its play that it was still not 100%. In Saturday’s match against Chelsea, Pep Guardiola’s charges felt it for the first time in points.

City needs to improve their defence

Although the success of Guardiola’s Manchester in the past years has been born out of quality defending, this season the Citizens are depriving themselves of comfort in the table with an unnecessarily lax approach to defending. Across all competitions, they have scored from the first shot on target in 13 games.

While that wasn’t the case against the Blues, Chelsea flew into open defences an unhealthy amount of times. While in previous years a certain stopper has always performed well in the Citizens defensive line (John Stones last year, Ruben Dias and Aymerick Laporte years before that), this year it’s been lackluster from everyone.

Moving away from the classic two-stopper, edge-half system and the idea of an inverted fullback has revived thinking about football in Europe. But three stoppers plus Kyle Walker on the right is an unnecessarily defensive formation for Manchester City.

The Citizens have sovereignly the league’s best and widest attack, but they need to find their standard in defence. It would take a run of three or four games with a clean sheet to boost the team’s confidence. Once Guardiola manages to do that, there will hopefully be nothing left to stop his charges from going for another title.

Brentford lack speed

Defensive leader Ethan Pinnock has dropped out and Brentford’s defence has been a ripping calendar. The traditional trio at the back this time was Nathan Collins, Christopher Ajer and Ben Mee. They looked like confused giants against Liverpool’s fast-paced attack, who had absolutely no chance in terms of speed.

All Jürgen Klopp’s charges had to do was basically kick over the defensive line and they were a danger. They gave other teams a clear indication of how easy it is to succeed against Brentford. Pinnnock have been key and joyously decent in the long term, but you need a plan B. Invest in a young and fast stopper in the summer!

Source: Premier League