How Man City vs Man Utd showed that Guardiola tried to replicate the tactics of Barca sextuple winning team with City [A THREAD]:

(likes and rts appreciated)

This is how both the teams lined up. During Guardiola's sextuple winning season he lined up with 4-3-3 with Messi playing as a false nine and being given attacking freedom to do anything he wants,a similar thing was done with Mahrez vs Utd keeping the same thought in mind.

This is how City lined up during attacking buildup.
Dias being sturdier of the 2 stayed back the most while Stones being better on the ball tended to drift towards the right,similarly in Barca we know how solid Puyol was as a defender while Pique was the ball playing CB

The midfield was overloaded in both the teams with the left back joining the midfield to help gain numerical superiority in midfield. Abidal wasn't an attacking fullback and he joined the midfield,similarly Zinchenko didn't go on the overlap and joined the midfield.

Cancelo played just like Dani Alves. Dani Alves was given the freedom to join the attack by Pep during his Barca days. Similarly Cancelo was given the full license to do the same here. Cancelo sometimes drifted to AM and sometimes drifted to the RW postion during buildup play

Gundogan played the Iniesta role by going further up forward and trying to confuse the defence with his runs,silky turns and deft passes. De Bruyne stayed deep,played the Xavi role,he supplied throughballs and longballs to the flanks mostly who maintained the width.

Fernandinho as a player is similar to the Yaya Toure ( except the attacking traits which Yaya had). Fernandinho interchanged his position as a 3rd CB and a DM when Zinchenko joined midfield and just like Yaya he carried the ball out of defence during counters.

The only person couldn't execute his role perfectly was Mahrez ,his positioning was bad and sometimes he drifted too deep. Otherwise Foden and Sterling were fantastic,they stayed out wide during buildup and during counters they made inwards run into the penalty box.

Attacking fluidity was maintained throughout and Sterling,Foden and Mahrez each took shifts to be the ST during the match. A special mention needs to be made of de Bruyne, who was given a lot of freedom to go higher up by Guardiola which Xavi never got under Guardiola.

Conclusion: This was clearly an attempt by Pep to replicate the tactics of his Barca squad. Everything worked out well apart from Mahrez's role which needs to be worked on. Perhaps maybe he has to try Bernardo Silva there?!

End of thread. Thanks for reading.