Man City 1-3 Bayern: Muller hassles Yaya as Guardiola attains the next level of tiki-taka

Bayern’s pressing unsettles Toure; Muller is a perfect match for Pep

In the midst of all of Bayern’s wing-play and City’s deep lying midfield, Bastian Schweinsteiger was being afforded all the space to run into. Though Fernandinho was often covering Schweinie’s runs, Bastian started to drift away from the centre into a more right attacking role.

This involved letting Robben cut-in from the right and thus forcing Fernandinho to divert his attention there. The ex-Shakhtar man was purchased based on his previous big games in this tournament, and here despite having put in 4 out of 5 successful tackles and some crucial interceptions in the centre, he was let down by his teammate Yaya Toure’s uncharacteristic off-day.

Toure is a player who keeps moving off the ball in order to receive the ball in plenty of space, and he often lingers on the ball longer and prefers to drag away the opponent and surge forward with the ball. But against Pep’s team Toure was continually hassled by the likes of Muller, Schweinie and Kroos, and rarely did the Ivorian get time to take more than a couple of touches.

Toure lost the ball a couple of times just outside the box after being tackled down by the spirited Muller. And despite the Ivorain midfielder’s continual effort to push ahead, Bayern always had an extra man in midfield to stop the attack and push the ball to the wingers.

Bayern’s dominance in midfield was quite evident at the break, but Pellegrini barely changed anything at the start of the second half. The only change seemed to be that Toure started to press down Kroos and Lahm in much deeper positions. So this often saw Toure rush ahead towards the German duo in their half, and again due to Aguero’s static presence upfront, the Bavarians found a ball towards the wings. And now even more critically for City, it was only Fernandinho left in front of the City back 4. And even the Brazilian had an off-day next to Toure, as he cheaply gave away the ball to Robben for the 3rd goal.

After Fabregas’s performance as the False 9 against Celtic on Tuesday, Muller was expected to put in a similar shift against City. Only, the German international took it up a notch this time around. Muller was often seen close down Yaya Toure and his continual pressing saw Toure loose the ball plenty if times.

In fact Muller had the most extraordinary of stats for a centre forward as he ended the game with 8 headed duels in midfield and a 100% tackling rate. While in attack Muller pulled out into his regular wide right role, and he along with Schweinsteiger and Robben outnumbered the unfit Clichy at left back.

Pellegrini’s late changes show ‘What could have been’ a great game

Second half substitutions would have been City’s only chance of getting back into the game, and even these were extremely late additions by Pellegrini. 70th minutes changes saw Milner and Silva come on for City in-place of Navas and Aguero. The home team now looked much more stable with a proper No.10 added to the midfield and Milner imposing a better defensive presence against Alaba.

With Negredo now as a proper finisher upfront in place of Dzeko, Silva’s delicate ball from the hole allowed the Spanish striker to turn Boateng and finish perfectly into the corner. Another indication of the importance of Silva’s role was seen when the Spaniard’s flick saw Yaya Toure in on goal only to be tackled by Boateng who got sent off.

Pep’s changes were much more orthodox as Bastian was replaced by Kirchhoff. The ex-Mainz CDM was the culprit in Boateng’s sending off, as his inability to deal with the long ball led to Dante being pulled out off defence and space opening up for Toure’s run. The other change Shaqiri made a similar impact to what Robben had been doing all day.

In what had promised to be a cagey affair between the best team on paper in England and best in Europe, turned out to be a ruthless display of closely controlled passing at a tremendous speed followed by some intense pressing and closing down by Pep’s Bayern. Pellegrini has seen his 4-4-2 and 4-4-1-1 being quite successful in England, where Yaya Toure alone has been able to marshal the midfield duet. But the Chilean coach will need to rethink his strategy against the best of Europe.

Top of the match: Franc RiberyFlop of the match: Gael Clichy