Gabriele Marcotti: Gutsy gamblers may cost City

And then came Celtic and Tottenham. At Parkhead, they went behind three times and drew 3-3. At White Hart Lane, they were defeated 2-0, and that was only because Erik Lamela missed a second-half penalty.

There was a very obvious common thread. Both Brendan Rodgers and Mauricio Pochettino followed the same principle. So City want to build from the back? Fine. We’ll go for the jugular, committing bodies forward to press relentlessly.

When Celtic did it, some disregarded it as a one-off. It was the usual Parkhead cauldron that got to the City players. Several of Guardiola’s men had unforeseen stinkers on the same night. City could – and maybe should – have scored more, but for some sterling defending and goalkeeping from the hosts.

Fine. But then, four days later, Tottenham use the same blueprint and rip Pep Guardiola’s passing cobwebs into loose, meaningless strands.

And that begs the question whether this isn’t the basic antidote, something everyone can copy.

The fundamental problem with thinking you can emulate what Spurs (or Celtic) did is that it’s high-risk/high-reward. When you win the ball, you’re very close to the opposition goal. Do it enough times and you’re bound to create easy chances.

Equally, though, there are three ever-present risks with the high press. You can easily end up committing a string of fouls as you try to win back the ball and that translates into cautions and, possibly, suspensions and red cards.

There is the possibility that teams will pass through you, if they have enough quality. And there is a chance that a simple north/south big boot up the pitch will find a streaking, pacy forward and then, suddenly, you find yourself with your players defensively out of position and an opposing striker bearing down on goal. The hunter becomes the hunted.

These last two scenarios came to pass against Tottenham. For all the quality in Guardiola’s ranks, lest we forget he tried to pass his way out of Tottenham’s press with a back six that included Fernando, Pablo Zabaleta and Nicolas Otamendi, not exactly a trio of Franz Beckenbauers. And when they did resort to the long ball, they found Victor Wanyama in beast mode, with Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen patrolling behind and that was enough to snuff out whatever threat Raheem Sterling and Sergio Aguero were going to provide.

The problem is most teams don’t have a centre-back partnership as effective as Pochettino’s. Nor do they have someone like Wanyama who, on his day, can cover huge swathes of midfield on his own. In other words, press high the way Tottenham did and you risk finding yourself three goals down by half time.

That will provide some comfort for Guardiola. But only some.

Because the fact of the matter is that his short-passing game requires players with the technique to do it. Particularly in defence, if he’s going to build from the back. And the fact is, other than John Stones and possibly Aleksandar Kolarov (who has other flaws, like the turning circle of a channel ferry) his defenders aren’t suited to that style of play.

Equally, up the pitch, when there’s no Kevin De Bruyne and no Ilkay Gundogan to keep the ball moving, it becomes way too easy for the opposition to key in on Fernandinho and David Silva. Again, De Bruyne was injured against Spurs while Gundogan made way for Fernando, who was meant to provide additional defensive cover but struggled.

The question is, how does Guardiola resolve this? Persevere with the current style of play, knowing it could well be feast or famine?

Or does he conjure up a new tactical approach, one that doesn’t ask the likes of Bacary Sagna to impersonate Dani Alves circa 2012?

City may be the best side in the Premier League, but, increasingly, this does not look like a team assembled to suit the manager’s playing ethos. Indeed, you might even begin to wonder whether the huge sums spent on Marlos Moreno, Gabriel Jesus and Leroy Sane might not have been better spent elsewhere, particularly in the full-back role.

Guardiola built his career in part on making his players better over time. That’s great, but Zabaleta, Sagna, Kolarov and Gael Clichy are all the wrong side of 30. Might it not have been wiser to invest in ready-made full-back solutions or, at least, guys who – once they have been “improved” by the Guardiola regime – could give you more than a couple of seasons?

WHEN Spain travelled to Italy on Thursday, it offered a golden opportunity to judge just what impact national team coaches actually have. The two nations faced each other 100 days earlier, in the round of 16 of the European Championships and Italy had won 2-0. But now, the managers had changed, with Julen Lopetegui replacing Vicente Del Bosque and Giampiero Ventura taking over from Antonio Conte.

It finished 1-1 in Turin, but the scoreline doesn’t tell the story. For 70-odd minutes, Spain dominated Italy to a degree rarely seen in the international game, unless you’re playing Liechtenstein. The Azzurri were compressed deep in their own half as Diego Costa played bumper cars with Italy’s back three. Spain showed a cutting edge and an ability to recover the ball that snuffed out any chance at a counter. Then, a goal down 20 minutes from time, Italy threw caution to the wind, threw on two strikers, Andrea Belotti and Ciro Immobile, took the game to Spain and grabbed an equaliser.

It’s hard to imagine Italy under Conte playing as terrified as they did for much of the game. And, equally, Del Bosque’s Spain is unlikely to have pushed the directness of Diego Costa and Vitolo the way Lopetegui did. Matches like these remind us that while players obviously matter at international level, managers still have a huge impact. Because these were largely the same characters doing entirely different things under different bosses.