Despite a recent upturn, it isn't uncharitable to say City aren't yet anything close to a Pep Guardiola City. They still have residual flaws and gaps, which Brentford almost exposed. But those flaws become less relevant if you have a player who can simply blast away and potentially score two goals a game.
Such force goes a long way.
That effect is even more relevant because Guardiola himself has spoken about how the packed calendar makes it impossible to fully coach his ideology.
"Today, modern football is not positional," the Catalan said in January. "You have to ride the rhythm. It is unbelievable. We could not because we did not have the players… it counts when you play every three days."
"It made me reflect," Guardiola surmised.
A theme of Inside Football so far this season has been how the game is entering a new post-Pep era, but it's perhaps not untypical that Guardiola himself might be leading it. He's already gone full circle, playing Jose Mourinho-style Internazionale football against Arsenal. That is one of many developing responses to the dilution of Guardiola's "positional" game.
We are already seeing less possession among many of the top clubs across leagues. We're certainly seeing more set-pieces.
Another alternative is greater trust in individual quality, which Arne Slot appears to have embraced.
The dominant paradigm for the last 15 years, after all, has been individuals subsuming themselves to the system. This was probably best illustrated with Jack Grealish under Guardiola.
It was almost the anti-Galáctico approach. Rather than stars suddenly combining for spectacular 15-minute spells of football due to their innate understanding of the game – as with Real Madrid against Manchester United in 2002-03 – coaches developed systems that persistently sustained the same way of playing. The fall-back was always the system.
Slot himself has been a devotee of this approach, but the evolution of a congested calendar has caused a rethink.
The need for this might be even more necessary in a Premier League that possibly has a more pronounced competitive balance this season.
The middle-tier clubs have remained strong. Even better, teams like Bournemouth and Crystal Palace seem to have weathered the sales of star players and actually improved. On the other side, the wealthiest clubs don't look to have been able to pull away in the same way.
One potential differentiator from all that money, then, is elite quality: the stars. Haaland is showing the difference.
Liverpool obviously have a few different issues right now, some of which are discussed in this video. Another clear issue is that their stars aren't doing anything close to what Haaland is doing yet.
In fact, as Slot attempts to evolve a new system, he isn't getting much from his stars at all. Every individual has a different issue. Florian Wirtz hasn't adapted yet and clearly isn't functioning as an attacking midfielder. Isak isn't fit enough yet. Mohammed Salah is off form and isn't fully operating in a new formation without Trent Alexander-Arnold. Behind them, even Alisson is injured, and Virgil van Dijk has been more vulnerable in a more open approach. The most extreme manifestation of this was the space that opened up for Chelsea's Moises Caicedo.
This is all obviously fixable. The question now is whether it can be fixed enough in time for Liverpool to mount the type of title defence their individual quality – and expenditure – suggests they should.
They are all now behind an Arsenal side that is potentially an outlier in this regard.
Mikel Arteta may not quite have the same level of star power – even if Martin Zubimendi, Bukayo Saka, and Eberechi Eze offer a considerable counter-argument – but they do have a system that has been substantially drilled.
It is so hardwired that Arteta can make a number of changes around it without dropping off.
Many of their rivals don't currently have that luxury, and instead have to rely on their luxury signings.
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