Joško Gvardiol's goalscoring prowess - how to better utilise in the modern game?

[Fortitude]

This guy has the technical prowess of a midfielder and a composure in the final third you don’t normally associate with FB’s or most CB’s. These are a few of his goals at City:



He scored another class one yesterday. Bear in mind, he is supposedly left-footed, but look at the technique and intention on those strikes; even his headers are brilliant. If he isn’t the best actual defender in the final third in the game, he is definitely in the running. In the past, players like Beckenbauer, Passarella and Koeman - all exceptional technicians and goalscorers - had whole teams set up to incorporate their attacking prowess. All of them played straight through the middle, however, where Gvardiol mostly encroaches from the flank.

Pep, as he is wont to do, is minimising an individual’s full scope for the automation and function within the team schematic; Gvardiol essentially plays with brakes on there to do what Pep asks of him, so we’ll not see the full maturation of Gvardiol’s attacking brilliance under him.

My question is, is there a current club who would be able to facilitate his game in the old school ways of those luminaries mentioned above, somewhere where Gvardiol’s attacking potential would be exhausted? Another question is: where and how would you play him to have him in the final third as many times as he should be there? Perhaps even moving him into midfield?

 

[didz]

Except for the times where he's asked to stay back to accommodate Lewis doing similar things, but worse, I don't think Guardiola is actually limiting him. Part of the threat with Gvardiol is his being able to pop up in weird positions from a nominal fullback role, and you rob him of that if you take him away from there.

I think he's playing at his best right now. I think he has 6 goals in his last 8 away games? I don't see that stat being improved by utilising him in any other fashion. He's often got quite a lot of freedom at City because when a player is clever enough to take advantage of it and fit enough to be where he needs to be during transitions, Guardiola doesn't impose too much upon them. It's usually the wingers he beats creativity out of with a clipboard.

That being said, to answer your question, he'd be phenomenal for us next season after City's relegation and should immediately start plotting his move to United. Like, yesterday. He won't even have to move and neither will his kids. For the love of god Josko, think of the children!

 

[Bwuk]

I think him playing as the LB/LCB lets him get into these positions to get shots off. Pep probably is using him correctly.

 

[harms]

Yeah, I don't agree that City's system limits him in any way. It's the other way around, he often gets into the box as a secondary threat (it was one of the indirect ways to replace Gündoğan before he, well, came back) and I doubt that any other team in the world is going to give him this many goalscoring opportunities. If you want a manager that will bring something out of your talented yet slightly unconventional defenders, this version of Guardiola is your best bet — from Lahm & Alaba at Bayern to Stones, Lewis, Cancelo & now Gvardiol at City.

 

[Rojofiam]

Except for the times where he's asked to stay back to accommodate Lewis doing similar things, but worse, I don't think Guardiola is actually limiting him. Part of the threat with Gvardiol is his being able to pop up in weird positions from a nominal fullback role, and you rob him of that if you take him away from there.

I think he's playing at his best right now. I think he has 6 goals in his last 8 away games? I don't see that stat being improved by utilising him in any other fashion. He's often got quite a lot of freedom at City because when a player is clever enough to take advantage of it and fit enough to be where he needs to be during transitions, Guardiola doesn't impose too much upon them. It's usually the wingers he beats creativity out of with a clipboard.

That being said, to answer your question, he'd be phenomenal for us next season after City's relegation and should immediately start plotting his move to United. Like, yesterday. He won't even have to move and neither will his kids. For the love of god Josko, think of the children!

I agree.

I think one of, if not his biggest strength, is his agility despite being a tall player. He's able to move like a 1,75m tall player that has a much lower centre of gravity, despite being 1,85m tall. It's a great weapon defensively as well, not just going forward, so I don't think moving him further up the pitch is necessary, at all.

And funnily enough, United were also the first team that came to mind that he would be great for, if City get expelled from the league. Sadly, though, Gvardiol seems like one of those players that are too good not to end up at either Real Madrid or Barcelona eventually, unless they have real loyalty towards their current club. I doubt we could get our hands on him if he's available, especially for a low price.

 

[Fortitude]

Except for the times where he's asked to stay back to accommodate Lewis doing similar things, but worse, I don't think Guardiola is actually limiting him. Part of the threat with Gvardiol is his being able to pop up in weird positions from a nominal fullback role, and you rob him of that if you take him away from there.

I think he's playing at his best right now. I think he has 6 goals in his last 8 away games? I don't see that stat being improved by utilising him in any other fashion. He's often got quite a lot of freedom at City because when a player is clever enough to take advantage of it and fit enough to be where he needs to be during transitions, Guardiola doesn't impose too much upon them. It's usually the wingers he beats creativity out of with a clipboard.

That being said, to answer your question, he'd be phenomenal for us next season after City's relegation and should immediately start plotting his move to United. Like, yesterday. He won't even have to move and neither will his kids. For the love of god Josko, think of the children!

Decent take, but I think he’s capable of more, a lot more. Perhaps I shouldn’t have titled this goalscoring prowess, but instead: attacking prowess. His technical acumen is quite something and it’s rarely spoken about because it’s not exhibited as much as it should be at City, or perhaps it’s the modern football lens that blurs.

This guy would have been a celebrated maestro in a few iterations of the game gone by.

 

[Lee565]

I noticed this a lot with pep sides at city, they all seem to possess the ability to score from outside the box when given a second space from foden, to de bruyne, Rodri or gvardiol

 

[JBG]

I noticed this a lot with pep sides at city, they all seem to possess the ability to score from outside the box when given a second space from foden, to de bruyne, Rodri or gvardiol

We have players like Rashford, Eriksen, Bruno and even Amad who has the ability to do that at the same rate City do, but for some reason they can't hit the target most of the time.

 

[didz]

I noticed this a lot with pep sides at city, they all seem to possess the ability to score from outside the box when given a second space from foden, to de bruyne, Rodri or gvardiol

It's a good weapon to have when you face a lot of teams that sit deep. I imagine the team was built and coached with this in mind.

 

[didz]

Decent take, but I think he’s capable of more, a lot more. Perhaps I shouldn’t have titled this goalscoring prowess, but instead: attacking prowess. His technical acumen is quite something and it’s rarely spoken about because it’s not exhibited as much as it should be at City, or perhaps it’s the modern football lens that blurs.

This guy would have been a celebrated maestro in a few iterations of the game gone by.

As more of a playmaker do you mean? If so, you want a team that will be able to get him on the ball a lot and in good areas. At City, he's averaging 88 touches per game and I would say that he's getting into very good areas very often, so I'm still not sure I see it.

But you've got me thinking whether there's another team from yesteryear that he might've slotted into and ended up being appreciated more in the history books, and where he might have played in them. Cruyff's Barcelona comes straight to mind, but then I remember that they operated with false fullbacks a lot as well, and he could find himself truly limited by just being an upgrade on either Sergi or Ferrar. Ironically, he may well have been seen by Cruyff as better than Guardiola or his mate Txiki in midfield and ousted one of them from the team. The foreigner rule would be a barrier, though.

An Italian side could be a great fit. He does have a bit of a 90s Series A vibe, and there he'd almost certainly have been seen as an attacker who could do defending really well rather than the reverse, as he is now. Stick him in the 98 CL final in place of Edgar Davids and Juventus lose nothing defensively, but might have had enough creativity to get themselves on the score sheet against Real Madrid, force ET, and win the tournament from a Gvardiol penalty. In this reality, Perez goes nuts for Zidane's Croatian teammates instead and signs him a few years later. The Galacticos become the Gvarlicos and actually win things, while seasoning tomato sauces and slaying vampires in their spare time.

I'm not sure this was the answer you were hoping for but it was a fun thought experiment for me anyway.

 

[V.O.]

I must have scrolled past this thread five or six times before I realised it wasn't a @LuckyScout78 thread.

 

[Red the Bear]

I've got to disagree, I don't think there's much you could do short of building the team around him to squeeze a few more goals and while Pretty good he's not that good.

I think its a bit of an unfair criticism towards pep that he limits his players, did he do it in the past? Absolutely but it's a criticism that has stuck past it's expiration date, he's gotten much more flexible in his approach to accommodate certain players as we've seen with Haaland and even doku to a degree and I'd say he's done the same with gvardiol, pep has clearly given him the license to roam quite a bit.


Perhaps a reason that notion has stick is the players themselves, people look at how methodical city can be and extrapolate that to pep limiting his players but I'd reckon what you see is what you get, players themselves have gotten more mechanical possible as result of the pep mania itself and city/pep pre selecting for those profile of player, I think my hypothesis could be validated by comparing his players out of his own system, have zinchenko and Jesus been fundamentally different in Arsenal than they've been in city? Not really in fact many of his players seem to struggle in their much less organized national teams.

 

[Nani Nana]

Luke Shaw was playmaking from the left-back position at Southampton, wasn't he?

 

[padr81]

This guy has the technical prowess of a midfielder and a composure in the final third you don’t normally associate with FB’s or most CB’s. These are a few of his goals at City:



He scored another class one yesterday. Bear in mind, he is supposedly left-footed, but look at the technique and intention on those strikes; even his headers are brilliant. If he isn’t the best actual defender in the final third in the game, he is definitely in the running. In the past, players like Beckenbauer, Passarella and Koeman - all exceptional technicians and goalscorers - had whole teams set up to incorporate their attacking prowess. All of them played straight through the middle, however, where Gvardiol mostly encroaches from the flank.

Pep, as he is wont to do, is minimising an individual’s full scope for the automation and function within the team schematic; Gvardiol essentially plays with brakes on there to do what Pep asks of him, so we’ll not see the full maturation of Gvardiol’s attacking brilliance under him.

My question is, is there a current club who would be able to facilitate his game in the old school ways of those luminaries mentioned above, somewhere where Gvardiol’s attacking potential would be exhausted? Another question is: where and how would you play him to have him in the final third as many times as he should be there? Perhaps even moving him into midfield?

With brakes on?
He literally spends 75 minutes in the opposition 3rd every game and has more touches in the opposition box than any defender in the league. Given he likes to sit on the edge of the box and play 1-2's shoot thats even more impressive. He's almost been give a free role in possession to do what he wants similar to what Cancelo was. If you think Pep is minimizing his individual quality you're crazy. He's one of very few players at City with complete freedom when in possession.

As I said already he has the most touches in oppo box of any defender. He has the 3rd most shots (behind Porro and Yates). He's joint 4th for key passes (Porro, Leif Davis and Trent ahead of him) and he's joint top scorer for a defender.

Wondeful player who can do everything but theres zero top teams in Europe who will build their attack around him.

 

[Righteous Steps]

I think he actually has a lot of freedom, he is a throwback to yesteryear with just how unconventional he is in a modern era of football where everything seems to be formulaic and regiment.