Manchester City Fan View: Pep Guardiola's plans are beginning to take shape

Manchester City left the North East of England with three points in the bag after earning a 2-0 victory at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. Pep Guardiola’s travelling Blues proved, as expected, to have far too much quality for the Wearsiders, who remain anchored to the bottom of the Premier League.

With impressive individual performances littered throughout a dominant and cohesive team display, this result takes City to nine games unbeaten in all competitions. Here are some of the key points from the latest impressive display.

Guardiola’s ideas are taking root

After a difficult spell in the middle of the season where City appeared to be taking something of a step backwards and defensive errors punctuated every match, there has been a clear move towards ‘getting’ Guardiola’s ideas in recent weeks. In the victory over Sunderland, all the hallmarks of a typical Pep team were on display. For a start, the Blues ended the match with 71% possession. Their dominance of the ball provided the basis for a commanding performance.

It’s all well and good having the ball, but once you’ve got it, you need to know what to do with it. This has been an area of significant improvement in the current unbeaten run. With the ball at the back, the defenders are clearly grasping the principles of positional play. John Stones, Aleksander Kolarov and the fullbacks, as well as Fernandinho in the middle, become interchangeable when on the ball. They drop off into intelligent positions to make the space as big as possible and pull the opponents out of position. They are fluid and mistakes in possession at the back are becoming rarer with every passing fixture.

Up front, the ever-dazzling brilliance of Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sané continues to provide a balance that is absolutely essential if Guardiola’s ideals are to be met. City can play with great width as the two roam free, just as they did here. Their movement was dizzying as each attacked their full-backs, darting in and out of the space between them and the central defenders. As a result, David Silva – and latterly, Kevin De Bruyne – was afforded the space to create in the centre of the pitch. It all added up to a combination that was sure to eventually break Sunderland down. Which leads perfectly to…

Sergio Agüero is back in the habbit

After all the talk that Agüero might be done at City because the manager dared to put him on the bench when he was out of form, he’s come back with a bang. There’s no doubt that, at times, he’s struggled to do what his manager has asked. Maybe his runs haven’t been as clever as we might all like or that his running, if not lacking in effort, has certainly been laboured at times. That all changed with his first goal against AS Monaco in the Champions League just over a week ago. That strike was to be the first of five goals in three games, the latest of which opened the scoring here. After making a perfectly timed run into the box he reacted first to Sterling’s deflected pass to flick the ball instinctively past Jordan Pickford in the Sunderland goal.

It was a goal that combined everything Pep desires to see in his team. It started with a pass by the goalkeeper and finished with a wide man assisting a potent striker; it wouldn’t have looked out of place in Pep’s Bayern Munich team where Franck Ribéry and Arjen Robben would be expected to tee up Robert Lewandowski in a similar way.

Agüero looks happy right now and he suddenly looks more focused than ever. This can only be good news for his team and, hopefully, his long-term future in Manchester.

Hitting form at the right time

If it is possible for there to be a ‘best time’ to be in form, then City have found it. Of course, it would also have been quite handy to be more consistent around the time Chelsea started to pull away from everybody else, but there’s no doubt that when all around them are showing signs of creaking, the Blues are doing quite the opposite. As Arsenal continue to do…well…an Arsenal, Liverpool slip up against lowly teams and Manchester United refuse to lift their head above sixth place, City are in a good position to start putting a gap between themselves and their rivals for a top four finish.

Handily, it also means they are on hand to take advantage of any Chelsea slip-up. City are eight points off the leaders on level games, though at the time of writing Chelsea are yet to play their weekend fixture. Whilst a serious title-challenge might yet be a step too far, if Antonio Conte’s outfit do start to feel the heat, City will be there to ramp up the temperature by a few more degrees. Given that the two still have to meet at Stamford Bridge, things could still get interesting.

It is clear now that whilst there have been struggles, and though there will be more difficult days to come, the seeds of something very special have been sewn and are taking root at Manchester City. With an FA Cup quarter-final still to come and a Champions League dream still very much alive, Pep’s men are in fine shape. Things are as exciting as they’ve been in years and in this form, absolutely nothing in this season is settled yet.