KEOWN: Lewis' role shows how Guardiola is willing to push boundaries

MARTIN KEOWN TALKS TACTICS: Rico Lewis’ role for Manchester City shows how genius Pep Guardiola is always willing to push boundaries

• Rico Lewis’ positioning against Tottenham showed the genius of Pep Guardiola
• Lewis moved infield but was also taking up wider positions for Manchester City 
• It will be an intriguing battle between strikers Erling Haaland and Harry Kane

Manchester City and Tottenham meet for the second time in 18 days on Saturday and if the first instalment was anything to go by, we are in for a pulsating battle. Spurs led 2-0 at the Etihad, then City won 4-2 thanks to a devastatingly clinical second half.

I would love to sit beside Pep Guardiola in the dugout. He would be fascinating to listen to because he is a tactical genius.

Before the 2011 Champions League final against Manchester United at Wembley, I had the pleasure of watching Barcelona train at Arsenal’s training ground and Guardiola insisted on practising on the smallest pitch available. The idea was his players would walk out at Wembley feeling they had acres of space, and Barca used it well, beating United 3-1. It underlined Guardiola’s attention to detail.

After beating Spurs, Guardiola accused his City players and the fans of being too comfortable. He is concerned that, after winning four of the last five Premier League titles, they have slipped into a comfort zone.

Guardiola wants driven individuals who are as obsessed with winning as him. If you are not prepared to embrace that environment and you fall out with him, you will be sent on loan to Bayern Munich like Joao Cancelo this week. But I want to highlight another full back and that is 18-year-old Rico Lewis.

Pep Guardiola creates a canvas where he can position players to help win him the game

Despite his superb record, it still seems as though Man City are adapting to Erling Haaland

Guardiola is always pushing the boundaries of what is possible. He creates a canvas where he can position the players in such a way they win him the game.

We have seen Guardiola push full backs into midfield and against Tottenham, Lewis was doing just that. It allowed City to outnumber Spurs’s two-man midfield, giving Ilkay Gundogan the freedom to push forward and helping them to dominate possession and develop play.

Rico Lewis was excellent against Tottenham, moving infield and taking up wider positions

In the second half, Lewis was still moving into midfield but he also took up wider positions in support of Riyad Mahrez. 

When Guardiola stays somewhere long enough, starlets can enter the first team having had his style of play ingrained at the academy; Lewis is a prime example of that.

Erling Haaland has scored 25 Premier League goals and that would have been enough to win the Golden Boot in the last four seasons — yet it feels like City are still adapting to playing with a centre forward.

Haaland loves an out-swinging cross and Kevin De Bruyne is capable of supplying those from either side. But City’s wingers are more comfortable cutting inside and playing in-swinging crosses with their favoured foot — Mahrez with his left and Jack Grealish with his right — which are not as inviting to Haaland.

Guardiola is still searching for the perfect formula, but there remains a strong feeling that this team can win the Premier League. City have lost on their last four visits to Tottenham but if they win on Saturday, that will send a huge message across to the red half of north London.

Antonio Conte spent so well in the summer that I felt this was the strongest Tottenham team we had seen in years. I still think they can make the top four and perhaps pick up a trophy.

Antonio Conte’s Tottenham are still capable of winning a trophy and getting into the top four

Harry Kane will be fired up for the game against Manchester City as he faces Erling Haaland

Conte used the January window to try to add more thrust to his wing-backs, who are key to his counter-attacking style. Djed Spence and Matt Doherty have departed, and Pedro Porro has arrived on loan from Sporting Lisbon. Porro will play on the right and Ivan Perisic on the left with Emerson Royal and Ryan Sessegnon as back-ups.

Conte will expect these wing-backs to give him the width and pace he wants, while Dejan Kulusevski and Son Heung-min move inside to unleash vicious shots and feed Harry Kane.

Kane will be fired up for this match. He is second only to Haaland in the Premier League’s scoring charts and has watched the new kid on the block flying at City — the club he wanted to join himself in 2021.

These two record-chasers will go head-to-head on Saturday and Kane will want to show, for 90 minutes at least, that he can still be the league’s top marksman.

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