‘Never seen this before’ – Jamie Carragher spots Pep’s brand new tactic to beat Man Utd with Stones in shock position
JAMIE CARRAGHER lavished praise on John Stones after he performed a tactic “never seen before” as Manchester City beat United.
Marcus Rashford’s 30-yard strike stunned the Etihad but the Red Devils barely threatened Pep Guardiola’s team after that.
Despite their dominance, they still went in at the break leading – largely thanks to Erling Haaland’s “worst miss ever” – but then Phil Foden took centre stage.
The 23-year-old England attacker curled a superb shot past Andre Onana to level on 56 minutes.
United remained set up to try to stifle City and were hanging on at 1-1 until Foden struck again with ten minutes to go before Haaland rounded off the scoring in stoppage time to secure Manchester derby bragging rights and the 3-1 victory.
While Foden stole the headlines, it was his team-mate that Sky Sports pundit Carragher wanted to talk about on Monday Night Football.
England defender Stones, 29, often performs the hybrid role for City, but yesterday he was going from centre-half into the No.10 position and “running the game”.
Carragher said: “We are watching something that I’ve never seen before in English football and I’ve been watching since the mid-80s.
“The only defender back then that you would class as a defender good on the ball would be Alan Hansen of Liverpool.
“I then remember watching [Franco] Beresi, who was pretty similar and would come out with the ball from the back, Rio Ferdinand, I think, was another one of those…
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“The only one I can think that was doing what John Stones is doing now is Mathias Sammer around Euro ’96 for Germany.
“But John Stones is going from centre-back to No.10. We’ve never seen this before.”
Carragher showed Stones’ heat map from the game which revealed that the ex-Everton man had completed 39 passes in that forward position.
The Liverpool legend said: “Interesting thing at the top there is the 39 passes completed, the most he’s ever had in a Premier League game.
“Why has he had so many touches, even though he has been playing this role for 12 months, and it’s because of the set-up of Man Utd and their marking system in midfield.”
Carragher then showed a number of clips and stills from the game showing how United were not only set-up, but also revealing how City took advantage of a gap in front of their defence left by the lack of a holding midfielder.
He said: “Whenever Pep Guardiola comes up against Erik ten Hag he always splits his No.8s wider and, at times, we’ve seen Haaland come deep to get the ball, Rodri make runs into this space and this time it was John Stones running into this space.”
Carragher criticised United for not being compact last week against Fulham, upsetting Ten Hag in the process.
But that did not stop him from showing another example of them defending deep against City with the key area he had spoken about once again being available to exploit.
“[Kobbie] Mainoo is with Kevin De Bruyne, Casemiro drops into centre-back basically because of the man marking system that they employ.
“Looks at John Stones now, he’s enticing Jonny Evans out of position. He’s not just going in there as a body, he’s running the game John Stones.
“Like I said, we haven’t seen this before in English football – it’s unique.”