They certainly are but I think that's also in large part because of how teams set up against them. If they had the space to play into I think they'd be devastating which is why hardly any team dares to go toe to toe with them.
Playing four central defenders for a home match does them no favours though. I know that two of them nominally start in full-back positions but there's a big difference between having someone like Bradley bombing forward to having Gvardiol occasionally joining onto the back of slow attacks. There was hardly any over or underlapping today, Guardiola seemed content to let his attacking players try to conjure something up without those overloads.
I disagree. Obviously good players can look good with space on the counter, but a lot of the time they barely even want to. Quite a few times yesterday Haaland was on the run in behind, and they had a chance to counter but they played it backwards safely and got the whole team up the field.
Only De Bruyne seems to have permission to play the daring pass. They don’t want to try a counter incase they lose it again. Guardiola is afraid one of his 60m defenders might mess up with a little pressure, get the team higher up the pitch and defend away from the box.
Same against us, they were looking like they could cause issues with counters and he brings off De Bruyne for more control in midfield.
Utterly boring to watch, they have been for years. I accept it when I want to watch the big games but never watch them outside of the games against top teams.
