Today, we welcome one of the giants of English football to the John Smith Stadium, Manchester City, coached by the fabled Pep Guardiola and boasting a squad of internationals. Over the past 10 years The Citizens have risen from mid-table mediocrity to a European giant, make no mistakes this will be a tough, tough game.
In recent years, many fans, including myself have bemoaned our poor FA Cup form and our less than inspiring draws, with Birmingham and Arsenal been the two stand-out ties of the past 15 years. As Dean Hoyle mentioned on TalkShite radio earlier this week, our FA Cup run has come at the time we least wanted it. Flying high in the league and chasing down the top two, added fixtures and the possibility of a heavy defeat in the cup aren't exactly what this squad needs.
However, this is a huge opportunity to boost confidence, raise our profile and test our wits against some of the best players in Europe, and probably the best manager on the continent as well. It is for this reason that I don't want to see drastic squad rotation from Wagner, a much-weakened eleven will do a disservice to a sell-out crowd and put us at peril of an embarrassing reverse. There will be no Mooy, we know that already, and certainly no Hogg, the two players who have been at the heart of much of our recent positive work, how their replacements fare will have a huge impact on the final result.
Firstly, let's analyse City and their potential approach to this game. With hopes of the premier league all but gone in Pep's maiden season, the champions league surely takes on much greater significance to them than the pursuit of glory in an increasingly devalued cup competition. On Tuesday evening they will take on Monaco in the last 16 of Europe's premier competition, eager to avoid the same fate as Arsenal did a few years ago. Exit at the last 16, to a second tier European club would be seen as a massive underachievement for Pep, so all of their focus must turn to Tuesday's game.
In the City chief's press-conference yesterday, he alluded to the possibility that rotation may be at the forefront of his mind when speaking about the injury to Gabriel Jesus;
"It's not easy for the players who do not play for a long, long time in many cases like Kelechi Iheanacho and Nolito, their behaviour has been more than professional, it was perfect"
Highlighting the idea that Pep will view this as a game to give more minutes to some of his fringe players, with the hope of keeping them happy and fresh for the rest of the season. The fact that Guardiola is highlighting Iheanacho and Nolito indicates that Sergio Aguero will not feature, surely a massive boost for messrs Wagner, Schindler and Hefele.
When asked about the Terriers in the press conference, after watching their victory over Leeds on television Pep said;
"Huddersfield right now is in a big moment, playing really well, big results in the last minutes and a lot of confidence. Yesterday was a rugby game on their stadium, so you can imagine the condition of the pitch."
Explicitly this snippet of analysis does not provide too much, but implicitly I feel it reveals quite a lot. The question asked by the reporter referenced the fact that Guardiola had watched us on television against Leeds. He hadn't been to the stadium, he hadn't watched us against Rotherham, QPR or anyone else. He had seen us in a West Yorkshire derby, a game with blood and thunder and thumping challenges. He then qualifies this with questioning the state of our pitch after a recent rugby match. All of this signals to me that he is expecting a very different game to the one he is going to get.
Perhaps to the Catalonian, this is a trip to a lower league tub-thumping, heavy-handed traditional English club, instead of a match against a team well-versed on the tactical nuances of Gegenpressing, high on quality, skill and footballing intelligence. Maybe he's expecting to see Alan Lee elbowing Otamendi, Tony Carrs two-footing Delph and David Mirfin snapping Nolito in two, if he is, he will certainly be in for a shock.
All of this provides me, and us with a real cause for optimism ahead of the game, as do recent trends. We all know that Guardiola teams like to monopolise possession, wear their opponents down and employ a fast, sharp press high up the pitch, but so do we. None of our current players will be shocked, or flustered to find three Manchester City players pressing them at once, none of our players will be shy of keeping control of the ball and countering City's dominance.
Guardiola has done exceptionally well as a coach, dominating Europe with his Barcelona team and sweeping all before him as head coach of Bayern Munich, therefore, trying to highlight weaknesses in his style seems absurd, but there is one constant theme. The high press, this has proven to be the most successful tactic employed against any Guardiola team in the past seven years. In Germany, Bayern under Pep and Dortmund under Klopp faced off against each other eight times in total, sharing the spoils with four wins each. No team in the Bundesliga, barely even in Europe came close to this level of parity with the Bavarians, with Klopps high energy and high intensity pressing game seeming to disrupt the flow of the Tiki-Taka. Take this forward into the premier league, teams who have tried to outplay City or sit deep against them have come undone, notably Arsenal and a host of others. Whereas the teams that have pressed them and got at their back four have had great success, Liverpool, Spurs and Everton.
This has to be our blueprint going into the game, living up to our identity and leaving everything out on the grass as Wagner says will be our biggest key to success. With the right tactics, team-selection, desire and backing from the stands little old Huddersfield have every chance of taming one of the big beasts of English football. I'll leave the final words of this post to David Wagner;
"To say that we will beat Manchester City is unrealistic, this is totally unrealistic, is it possible? Yes it is possible, because in football nobody knows the result before the game"
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