Just How Do You Beat Manchester City?

As Dua Lipa said, "Touch me like you touch nobody, put your hands all up on me."

It’s deep into extra time at the Etihad, and somehow a plucky Tottenham side have been holding the champions to a 2-2 draw for the best part of 90 minutes. City’s (and Oleksandr Zinchenko’s) perfect home record is about to come to an end, and Pep is not happy. His team has missed over 10 chances and conceded twice, and he’s already burned bridges with the club’s record goalscorer after subbing him off.

A De Bruyne corner is sent into the box amidst a flurry of Tottenham bodies, and lands at the feet of Gabriel Jesus, who smashes it past Lloris. City have the 3 points, and parity is restored. Pep and Aguero kiss and make up in a wholesome embrace. For a moment, City are perfect again.

Then in a moment of déjà vu, VAR does its thing. Laporte was seen to have handled the ball in the build-up, and the goal is disallowed. Pep and City are struck with flashbacks of last season’s Champions League semi-final, where their stoppage-time winner against Spurs was ruled out due to offside. Like Thanos in Endgame, VAR is inevitable.

Ironically, the one football club closest to the definition of “perfect” in the modern era somehow manage to continuously be undone by the rules newly enforced to utmost perfection. Laporte’s handball was never intentional, and – most importantly – not a single Spurs player even noticed it. But a handball is a handball, intentional or not. In last week’s game against West Ham, Gabriel Jesus’ goal was disallowed by VAR on the basis that Raheem Sterling’s shoulder was offside. Football purists called for a margin of error; that we cannot expect the offside rule to be enforced down to the tiniest of millimetres.

But these kinds of perfect rulings mimic exactly the kind of football that Pep’s City play – faultless, flawless football. Guardiola shouts at his strikers for not marking anyone during corners, has specific instructions for defensive throw-ins, and rotates even his most talismanic of players to ensure none of them are a touch below 100%. This is the reason why City were able to go on a 15-game winning run to take the league title, why they are still unbeaten at home in the entire calendar year, and why the Etihad has seen only 8 goals conceded since January.

And so to counter such flawless football is to sieve out the smallest, rarest lapses in their style of play - an arm offside, or a ball glancing off a shoulder – that is the only way to undo the kind of perfection that Pep Guardiola’s team seems to exude every time they step on the pitch. If a team like City can play with zonal marking systems that can go down to the smallest centimetres on the pitch, then why not the rules police that system down to the tiniest millimetre? To fight fire with fire - or in this case, perfection with perfection.

Apart from highlighting the finest of error margins through VAR, it would bode well to capitalise on the occasional mistake that City may make every once in a blue moon. It is no secret that the two goals scored by Spurs were more of City’s errors rather than Tottenham’s attacking prowess – Ederson’s weak positioning gave Lamela the chance to bend one into the far corner, while Aguero and Sterling’s inability to mark the onrushing Lucas at the near post were at fault for the second Spurs goal. Because when you play against City, the goal isn’t to dominate them or assert your style of play, it’s to snatch at whatever golden opportunities the City team gifts you, and take them with aplomb. The statistics don’t lie – City took 30 shots yet missed 28 of them, while Spurs only took 3 and scored twice. The one shot that Spurs missed was a Harry Kane punt from the halfway line after seeing Ederson off his line, once again showing the kind of opportunistic play that Spurs were forced into. If City had put away their other chances like they did against West Ham, Tottenham would’ve been nowhere near the point that they so luckily escaped with at the end of the match.

Even Liverpool’s 1-1 draw against City in the Community Shield showed that the way to score against City was to take charge of their defensive lapses in concentration. City somehow left Matip completely unmarked in the box after van Dijk’s cross, leading to his headed goal to cancel out Sterling’s opener. But these chances will increasingly be rarer and rarer, with City having strengthened through the signings of Rodri and Cancelo, and their prime mischief-maker Kevin De Bruyne finally back from injury. Leroy Sane’s injury would do little to bother them – as proved last season, even the Belgian playmaker’s absence can just as easily be filled by the plethora of world-class reserves that City have at their disposal.

In a season where Liverpool are doing the Daniel Levy no-signing challenge, where Tottenham are still struggling to hold their own against the champions despite having strengthened, and where the rest of the top six are in transition, City look like they are about to run away with the title again. The only thing stopping City from completely dominating the league is themselves, be it through a foot off the line from Ederson, or an overly quick Sterling, or a Laporte handball. To which VAR will be absolutely happy to pounce on, time and time again.