Pep Guardiola: The art of inverted fullbacks.

We are all aware of the brilliance that Pep Guardiola beholds. Managing Barcelona, Bayern Munich and now Manchester City, he has been a serial winner wherever he has been.

Often referred too as a tactical mastermind by fellow associates, Pep likes to tweak his tactics little and often to fine tune his sides ways of playing. One way we have seen that across his career is his use of Inverted fullbacks, which was seen often at Barcelona and Bayern Munich and is now being used extremely often in his Manchester City side especially since the introduction of Erling Haaland. I am going to take a deep dive into why Pep loves his inverted fullbacks and the tactical benefits his team gains from them.

Inverted fullback role in football:

The definition of inverted is something "placed or lying upside down or in the opposite position, order or arrangement from usual". In football the term inverted fullback means rather than being in their "normal" wide position at the left or right side of the pitch, they are instead inverted and come central when their team has the ball.

Image from:

https://www.360player.com/blog/what-are-inverted-fullbacks-tactical-breakdown

As seen in the image above, the two fullbacks join in to the midfield with the holding midfielder, and the other two central midfielders (commonly in a 4-3-3- formation) go forwards into the attacking line, creating a 2-3-5 formation in possession.

Out of possession this example would retract to a 4-3-3 with the fullbacks going back to their defensive flanks and the two central midfielders re joining the midfield with the holding midfielder.

Pep Guardiola Philosophy:

Pep Guardiola teams all have a very similar blueprint for success, which involve small tactical tweaks based on personnel and opposition.

Pep loves his teams to play short passes and keep possession when playing out from the back. He likes to create overloads to do this in his own defensive third in order to beat the first press. He builds his teams back to front to be able to play this type of football, starting from the goalkeeper being good with his feet, with good passing range, all the way to his wide forwards ability to run in behind as well as go 1v1.

We will further assess Peps ability to create overloads for his team when in possession of the ball a bit later, as this is one of the key components when it comes to playing in a Pep Guardiola side.

One other thing to note about Pep is how he has always had very gifted midfielders, who are able to pick a defence splitting pass at any moment. At Barcelona Pep was lucky enough to have some of the best passers in world football at his disposal such as Xavi, Iniesta and of course Lionel Messi slightly higher up the pitch. At Bayern Munich Pep had Xabi Alonso, Thiago Alcantara and his two inverted fullbacks Phillip Lahm and David Alaba. And then of course at Manchester City Pep has Kevin De Bruyne (widely regarded as one of the best passers in world football) and Rodri playing in the defensive midfield position keeping things ticking.

Pep has said in an interview with Sky Sports that the reason he likes to play with inverted fullbacks is "Firstly, because of the quality of players. Secondly, because I like to play with wingers high and wide. Thirdly, because I am a big fan of the short passes so if you have more players from behind that you can bring into the middle I think you can play better"

So now that we have an understanding for how and why Pep likes to set up and play the way he does. Lets take a look at some examples of his usage of the inverted fullback roles and the success they have bought him.

Pep's Bayern Munich (2015/16) team:

Now to understand Pep's use of the inverted fullbacks at Manchester City, we first have to look at his Bayern Munich team and how they utilised the inverted fullbacks to great success.

With Bayern Munich Pep had two extremely talented fullbacks in David Alaba and Phillip Lahm, who both had midfielders characteristics whilst playing at fullback. They were both incredible defenders but also had very good passing qualities and abilities to read the game. This is where we saw the midfield three (in possession in the 2-3-5 formation) of Xabi Alonso, David Alaba and Phillip Lahm. Other midfielders used in these roles for Bayern in 2015/16 were Arturo Vidal and the upcoming Joshua Kimmich who was looking like the obvious Phillip Lahm replacement plan.

Now going back to Pep's philosophy, Pep wanted his teams to create overloads in possession to alleviate pressure when playing out from the back. By inverting his fullbacks (Alaba and Lahm) he created a 2-3-5 formation, which allowed Bayern to build out from the back in a block of 6 consisting of Manuel Neuer, the two centre half's (often Boateng and Dante) and the now midfield 3 of Alonso, Alaba and Lahm.

By doing this it allows the two central midfielders (in this case Thiago and Muller) to bomb forward and create that front 5 line. This then allows the forwards a lot more freedom to make runs into the box and move the ball waiting for opportunities to arise. With the incredible talent in this forward line of Ribery and Robben out wide, who could play 1v1 and linkup play, as well as make dangerous runs in behind, this made it impossible to defend against.

This team went on to win the Bundesliga with 88 points, as well as winning the DFB-Pokal on penalties in the final against Borussia Dortmund, and reaching the Semi finals of the Champions league before being knocked out by Atletico Madrid in a 2-2 aggregate scorline, to an away goal scored at the Allianz by Atletico.

Image from:

https://www.thehighertempopress.com/2021/01/play-like-guardiolas-bayern-munich/

Pep's Manchester City:

Now of course we move on to Pep's dominant Manchester City team, who have won the Premier league 4 times in Guardiola's 6 previous seasons in charge (not including the current campaign 2022/23). In this time frame we have seen Manchester City succeed with both a natural, mobile number 9 in Sergio Aguero, but also with no recognised striker seeing the likes of De Bruyne, Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling and even Ilkay Gundogan playing the "false 9" role.

Now with Manchester City splashing an initial fee of £51 Million for the upcoming superstar Erling Haaland, we have seen Pep have to make tactical tweaks yet again due to the physical profile of Erling Haaland, and the characteristics he offers to the team. The first game we saw Erling Haaland in the Premier league was against West Ham, and this saw Pep set up with a 4-3-3 which at this point was not built around using inverted fullbacks. Although Cancelo who was deployed at left back had the ability on the ball, and similar characteristics that Guardiola liked of his inverted fullbacks, he still decided to play a more structured 4-3-3 where Kyle Walker on the right side made more overlapping runs rather than inverting. This style was more built around forming triangles out wide between the fullbacks, wingers and the outside central midfielders (the 8s).

However halfway through the season, Pep took a liking to one of Manchester City's very exciting youth prospects who goes by the name of Rico Lewis. Pep began to introduce Lewis from the bench which saw him make his debut in the Champions league in a 5-0 win against Copenhagen. The qualities Rico Lewis had were exactly what Pep loved in his inverted fullback roles. Lewis was extremely good on the ball, was good at beating the press and getting City on the front foot from inside their own half. Lewis is also very fast and was very good at defending transitions when City lost the ball. This is when we saw Pep begin to alter his tactics and play Rico Lewis in the inverted fullback role which became a 3-2-5 formation, the two centre backs and the right back becoming the back three, and Rico Lewis joining Rodri to create that midfield 2.

However, as good as Rico Lewis is, he is still very young. Therefore in recent weeks we have seen Pep change this yet again, and now it involves John Stones being the inverted fullback/player in this system. We have now began to see Manchester City set up with what most people would call four natural centre half's playing in the back four. However the quality of players that Pep has at his disposal at Manchester City means that his centre backs can also play the fullback position in most cases. For example Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji have both been deployed as Left backs under Pep, and John Stones (usually a centre back) has been played as a right back on multiple occasions. This means that John Stones is essentially inverting from the right back position in the current iteration of Pep's 3-2-5 formation, leaving one of Ake or Akanji to become the left sided defender in the back three.

The benefits of using inverted fullbacks in this Manchester City team:

Now that we have looked into how Pep has utilised the inverted fullback position in his career, we are going to take a look at why this has been so effective for him and the way he likes his teams to play. Whilst the inverted fullbacks were utilised in other seasons for Pep at Manchester City at times, the changes made to revert to using them this season has had a significant impact on the way Manchester City play, and the output of certain individuals.

As we highlighted earlier on, Pep likes to have his wingers high and wide. By playing with the inverted fullback/s Pep is overloading the central areas of the pitch, which will cause the opposition to also mark these central zones. This will often leave space out wide for the wingers to go 1v1 with the opposition fullback. In Manchester City's case this is leaving Jack Grealish and Riyad Mahrez in 1v1 positions which is exactly where they shine. According to fbref, Jack Grealish records 6.63 progressive carries per 90 (top 98% amongst attacking mids and wingers in the world) and 1.93 successful Take-Ons per 90 (top 72% amongst attacking mids and wingers in the world). The recent spike in Jack Grealish's form has been largely attributed to the changes Pep has made to the system allowing the wingers more space out wide to create, and go 1v1 with the opposition fullback (which is where we saw Grealish flourish at Aston Villa).

Another reason Pep uses the inverted fullbacks in this Manchester City system, is to allow the outside central midfielders (more attacking 8s) such as De Bruyne and Gundogan to go forwards and play with freedom. Kevin De Bruyne being the primary playmaker of this Manchester City team needs to have the license and freedom to float and create chances. This is afforded to him by Pep utilising inverted fullbacks to overload in deeper areas of the pitch leaving the opposition defenders with a decision to make. They can either press high onto the defensive midfielder and the inverted fullback/s leaving the attacking 8s space in behind to receive the ball on the move. Or the other option is to stay deeper marking their men more zonally, which allows Manchester City to step onto their opposition and pin them inside their own half which usually ends in goals given the attacking talent that Manchester City possess.

And of course it has to be touched on, the brilliance of Erling Haaland is what sparked this change in system for Pep Guardiola. In some games early in the season, Manchester City were trying to play similar to how they did before the arrival of Erling Haaland. However when Haaland has such desire to score goals and run in behind, certain tweaks were needed to ensure they are giving Haaland the best chance to be successful and do what he is best at, which is scoring goals. The increased utilisation that the inverted fullbacks have given to the wingers such as Grealish and Mahrez throughout this season, as well as giving De Bruyne chances to get into high output areas for his creation (14 Premier league assists already this season in 27 games), is allowing Haaland to shine and score goals.

Whilst this season has not been the most successful in Guardiola's reign as Manchester City manager, he has still found his team only 6 points off the top with a game in hand. With the run of fixtures to go, including playing the other title challengers Arsenal at the Etihad, I would argue that Manchester City are actually now slight favourites to go on and win the Premier league AGAIN. They really look like they are back to their dominant selves and with the tactical changes made by Pep Guardiola, will we see Manchester City go on to win the league over the incredibly impressive Arsenal this season and retain their title.