Pep Guardiola teases 'boring' Man City critics with hint over how he changed English football

If you ask or tell Pep Guardiola how he has changed English football, the Manchester City manager will generally bridle at the suggestion.

“I am not here to change English football,” he told The Guardian a few months after his arrival in 2016.

“I am not here to change the Premier League. But my team is going to play the way I believe in.”

In general, he has not deviated from this mantra, but evidence to the contrary is everywhere.

Guardiola’s high-possession, high-pressing style of fluid positional play has seen City dominate the English game in a manner never seen before.

Ederson is a goalkeeper whose most valuable attribute is his ability with his feet, Joao Cancelo is a full-back who does a lot of his best attacking work from an attacking central midfield position and both thrive in an XI that scores goals by the bucketload despite not having an orthodox striker.

In the example above, we see the benefits of a goalkeeper and defender in terms of what they add to City’s attack, but there is also a solid foundation that - numerically at least - has plenty in common with England’s previous best teams.

At his press conference to preview Wednesday’s Premier League match against Brentford, Guardiola was slightly mischievously asked if he was a “defensive manager” because on eight of the nine times he has won domestic titles with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City he has presided over the league’s most miserly backline.

“In those terms, yeah,” he chuckled, no doubt aware of how this might sound in the context of some of the “boring City” chat that was fuelled by an efficient 1-0 win over Thomas Frank’s side in December.

“We defend with the ball,” Pep continued, going on to explain how - like every other facet of