On the Spot: Why Guardiola has finally arrived

On Saturday, Pep Guardiola delivered his strongest performance yet as Manchester City manager with a 1–0 victory at Stamford Bridge against defending champions Chelsea. While many will point to the statistics of the previous three games — beating Watford 6–0, Crystal Palace 5–0 and 10-man Liverpool 5–0 — as evidence that Guardiola's brand of attractive, attacking soccer is finally making its mark on English shores, I would think it was this weekend that revealed his true brilliance.

Let's rewind our clocks, however, to City's 3–1 defeat at home to Chelsea last year. It was Guardiola that offered the first hint at how to stifle Chelsea's 3–4–3 system. Guardiola opted for a back-three, abandoning his favored back-four approach specifically for this game. Guardiola went man-to-man and adopted a unique high-press on Chelsea's backline, allowing his own creative players to dominate the game. Unfortunately for Guardiola, it wasn't sustained throughout the game defensively, allowing Chelsea to make a game-defining switch when Willian Borges da Silva came on which gave Chelsea some much needed pace on the counterattack.

But this year was different. Sure, many may point to the fact that Guardiola has had so much money to spend, as he spent close to $200 million on defenders this post-season. That makes it easy for him to achieve success, right? But it's one thing having the financial resources to build and another to get exactly the right defenders he needed to strengthen his side.

Manchester City was almost dominant from start to finish at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. Admittedly, Chelsea manager Antonio Conte made a huge tactical mistake when club-record signing Alvaro Morata went off injured. Instead of bringing on a target man such as reserve striker Michy Batshuayi for his defenders to play the ball out to,Conte opted to bring on Willian instead. This left Chelsea less effective on the break, as the team had to drop even deeper. From there on in it was City all the way. This came on the back of losing Sergio Aguero to a silly accident, Vincent Kompany to yet another injury and Benjamin Mendy to a knee problem.

The genius of Guardiola came in how he utilized his remaining players. Fabian Delph was deployed as a mix of left-wing back and left-central midfield — an inverted wingback almost deployed in midfield. And with Aguero out, Guardiola expertly deployed his speedsters Raheem Sterlingand Leroy Sané to pin Chelsea's back-three much deeper than Conte would have liked.

City's man-marking meant Chelsea's counterattacking players often found no joy. But the key to their success was this: Delph's presence in a hybrid role ensured that City would almost always control the midfield battle. Chelsea's two defensive midfielders, N'Golo Kanté and Tiémoué Bakayoko, would always be overwhelmed by the creative juices of Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva, often without help from the backline.

This was a tactical masterclass by Guardiola. It demonstrated that, despite key absences across the pitch, Guardiola maximized the potential of his squad players to devastating effect. In successfully adjusting his game plan, Guardiola leaves us in no question that this year, it is City that will be the team to catch.