Champions League performance insights: City's variety too slick for Copenhagen

Manchester City's supremacy in their first-leg fixture against Copenhagen this week can be measured in various ways.

From the four Champions League round of 16 games played, no team could match Pep Guardiola's side for possession (79%), touches (1,004) or number of passes in the attacking third (239) – and the latter came with an unrivalled 88% success ratio too.

For UEFA's analysis unit, though, it was City's work in progressing the ball into the penalty box which caught the eye especially. They were widely expected to dominate possession against the Danish champions and this meant the focus falling on their work in the final third and attempts to penetrate the Copenhagen penalty box. They did this well, with 19 entries from 34 attempts meaning they were successful more than 50% of the time.

The first bar chart above offers a breakdown of the different ways in which City entered the penalty box. Crosses (31%) feature prominently, as is typical of teams across the Champions League, and the same goes for individual actions (25%) but what stands out here is the importance of through balls (28%) to City's repertoire.

A through ball is defined as a pass breaking the last line of defence and on Tuesday night in Copenhagen, two of City's assists were through balls into the penalty box with one secondary assist/key pass leading to the final goal.

The video above provides two examples of through balls – the first of them the Phil Foden pass for Kevin De Bruyne to open the scoring. To elaborate on this point, the graphic below shows just how successful City were with their attempted through balls into the Copenhagen penalty box. As the arrows indicate, Foden (No47) was highly influential on the right side on an evening when the City wingers stayed wide, received the ball and looked to feed the runs of the attacking midfielders inside them.

In his analysis of the game, UEFA match observer Ole Gunnar Solskjær highlighted City's ability to advance the ball to those runners into the box "thanks to the excellent timing of the runs and knowing just when to go in behind defenders and when to play the ball. Foden's pass for De Bruyne's goal is the perfect example."

That Foden's pass found De Bruyne on the right of the box fitted the pattern of a match in which City had more joy on that right side of the area (Lane 4), as showed in this third graphic. The supporting video below offers an example of them profiting in Lane 4 – in this case via a quickly taken De Bruyne free-kick for Bernardo Silva to cross and set up a scoring opportunity. While not technically a through ball, it shows City working well on that side of the pitch to create an opening.

If we now take a backward step on the pitch, from penalty-box entries to final-third entries, the next chart helps to explain how City progressed the ball into their attacking third. This was a match in which the English title-holders played around Copenhagen's defensive shape. The hosts were compact in central areas and so City were patient in possession, working the ball around them to progress.

With this breakdown of the lead actions involved in their final-third entries, we see that non-penetrative passes (33%) and outside penetrative passes (32%) were prominent. In other words, adding these together, 65% of their passes into the attacking third involved working the ball around the home players.

Solskjær had the following interpretation of this approach: "They were able to sustain possession and push Copenhagen back deep in their own half. City wait and wait for the right moment, for a mistake or a lapse in concentration. They progress, they rotate. Then they hit you."

This final chart underlines the point about City playing around the Copenhagen shape, showing that 68% of their passes into the final third went to one of their two wingers. As already mentioned, the City wingers stayed out wide and it was the attacking midfielders making the penetrative runs in behind to receive through balls.

Indeed, if you look back at the second graphic above ('Manchester City through balls into penalty box') you will see that five of their ten attempted through balls into the box were supplied by either Foden (four) or Jérémy Doku (one).

To complete this analysis, the final video offers two last illustrations of City's approach work, providing an example of an outside penetrative pass (clip 1) and then a sequence combining another such pass followed by a Lane 4 through ball into the penalty area.

Copenhagen's players will have doubtless seen other examples when preparing for Tuesday's match. Knowing what is coming from City is one thing; stopping it is something else altogether as we saw once more.