Why Josko Gvardiol was so pivotal to Man City's fourth consecutive league title

Pep Guardiola's side may not have made history on Sunday, had they not been able to rely on the towering Croatian central defender at left back for most of the season.

Manchester City’s march to a fourth, consecutive league title could be put down to a number of things. Whether it be Erling Haaland’s goals, Phil Foden’s assists or the supremely dull but effective manner in which Rodri just snuffs out opposing attacks, Pep Guardiola’s team is unquestionably littered with world class players at the top of their game. Regardless of what many may think about the club’s wealth and the charges hanging over their use of said money, few would deny that Man City have one of the most talented squads ever assembled in world football. 

However, one player that has somewhat flown under the radar amidst the sheer glare and attention that his star-studded teammates have received this season is none other than Josko Gvardiol. The towering central defender signed from RB Leipzig, who has spent much of this season filling in at left-back. He may not seem like the most intriguing part of Guardiola’s team, but in many ways he has proven to be a crucial cog in Man City’s title-winning machine. 

Let’s begin at the start. Going into the 23/24 season, Guardiola had a notable hole in his defence. Having sold Oleksandr Zinchenko to Arsenal the season before and allowed Joao Cancelo to depart on loan to Barcelona, the only left-back in Pep’s squad was the relatively inexperienced Sergio Gómez. Man City needed a left-back and they didn’t exactly know where to get one. 

Then along came Gvardiol. The Premier League giants had been chasing the player’s signature for over a year, going toe-to-toe with Chelsea over transfer fees and wage demands, but when the RB Leipzig star ultimately settled on Man City, Guardiola realised he could plug his defensive hole with a slightly unusual solution but one that would more than likely get the job done. 

To understand why Guardiola may opt for a central defender at left-back and why it ended up working so well, we need to take a moment to appreciate how football is a “weak-link” sport. Unlike, say, Basketball, which often has teams dragged through matches by their best player, football has long been considered a sport in which a team is only as good as its worst player. And in Man City’s case that would have been Gomez or any unconvincing left-back in his place. By electing to stick a supremely talented defensive player in the position, Guardiola not only avoided that problem but also plugged a hole in his defence. 

The other reason it has worked so well is because Gvardiol also has a fair amount of experience at left-back. In his final season at his hometown club of Dinamo Zagreb, the defender played almost 70% of his games in the full-back position. Although the towering defender is far from a jinky wing-back, he does possess an impressive top speed and is an excellent passer of the ball. 

That much was made clear during his time at RB Leipzig, where Gvardiol was quickly shifted back to his more  natural centre back position but still maintaining an excellent ability to create chances in the final third. In his final season at the Saxony club, Gvardiol ranked in the top four among all Bundesliga central defenders for successful forward passes, passes into the opposition half and passes into the attacking third. As we can see in the Opta graph below, which ranks Gvardiol alongside Man City’s centre back options last season, the Croatian defender has always been an excellent, technical player with the ball at his feet. 

Intriguingly enough, when Gvardiol arrived at Man City his biggest challenge came from making too many audacious passes into the final third. Back in April, following a win over Luton that saw the defender score a screamer from outside the box, Guardiola explained why the Croatian defender had to adapt his game to his new role at Man City. “He arrived and in some periods he was confused,” Guardiola said. “He lost a lot of balls. Every time he had the ball, he wanted to make exceptional things (happen). We talked together and said a defender has to play the most easy, simple things. You have to demand creativity from the people up front but, as a defender, you have to play the simple things. He got the message incredibly. Since then, he’s played really, really good.”

That, perhaps, says more about Guardiola’s tactical outlook than Gvardiol’s talent as a player, but it’s been clear from this season’s performances that the defender has been placed on the left-flank to defend first and foremost. Playing at full-back, Gvardiol has won more tackles than any other Man City player in the Premier League this season other than Rodri. And his success rate in those tackles stands at an impressive 57%. That’s considerably higher than Kyle Walker’s rate of 49% on the opposite flank and when we consider that Gvardiol is second only to Rodri for combined tackles and interceptions for the season and has made more blocks than any other player in Guardiola’s team, we can clearly see how much of a stalwart defender the young player has been this season. 

Even if we zoom out and look at Man City’s overall stats, we can probably see where Gvardiol has been crucial in tipping the league title in his team’s favour. In the first half of the season - in which Gvardiol started just 12 of the club’s 18 league games - Man City were conceding on average 1.11 goals per game. Which was notably higher than Arsenal’s record of 0.95 goals conceded per game. But in the second half of the season and after Gvardiol cementing his spot at left-back, Man City’s average dropped by a remarkable 40% to just 0.67 goals conceded per game. 

This undoubtedly fits in with Guardiola’s over-arching tactical outlook of football. After all, his teams have always been about defending first and then scoring second, whether that be based around ultra-possession and counter pressing through tiki-taka or by simply sticking more defenders on the pitch. As he said after last season’s title win: “I learned this season when you play against [Bukayo] Saka, Vinícius [Júnior], these type of wingers, [Gabriel] Martinelli or [Mohamed] Salah or [Sadio] Mané in the past that you need proper defenders to win duels one against one.” In other words, a sturdy central defender is often far safer than an attacking wing-back. 

Whether Gvardiol remains on the left flank as a hybrid central defender turned full-back next season remains to be seen. But considering the fact that John Stones, Nathan Ake, Manuel Akanji and Ruben Dias don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, it seems more than likely that Guardiola will stick with his towering defender on the left. After all, it wasn’t Haaland or Foden that fixed Man City’s most glaring weak spot this season. It was Gvardiol and while he may not win any awards for it, there’s little doubt that he has the admiration of his manager, team mates and the club’s fans for helping them to a historic fourth consecutive league title.