Guardiola once again looked to utilise an asymmetric buildup scheme in attempting to break down the 5-3-2 defensive shape of Leicester. Mendy provided the width on the left side with his overlapping runs, while Walker at right back played very much as an inverted fullback in the right halfspace as Mahrez held the width on the right side. Bernardo would occasionally offer width on the left, such as through diagonal inside-to-outside runs behind Pereira when the Leicester wing-back pushed out to pressure Mendy.

There was then a relatively large gap between Mendy and Rodri in the second line as City’s left defensive halfspace was empty. This space could be utilised occasionally by Laporte driving out of defence with the ball or Bernardo dropping from higher in the left halfspace to offer a connection.

Rodri was generally hard to access immediately in the City buildup. He was relatively immobile in that he stuck to the six position in the second line and generally did not make wide-ranging movements to try and escape the cover of the Leicester strikers. Iheanacho in particular paid close attention to Rodri in the buildup. City could still reach Rodri via third man combinations with higher midfielders or through moving the ball back inside from wide positions, but still needed to be wary of the backwards pressing from Iheanacho in these cases.

Walker’s role afforded some interesting opportunities. He floated between the first and second lines of City’s buildup to either form a back three with Fernandinho and Laporte or play more like an inverted fullback in the right halfspace in the second line of buildup, which was useful with Rodri being hard to reach directly from the centre-backs.

Walker’s positioning was not really covered by the strikers of Leicester who were more oriented towards Rodri and the centre-backs. Meanwhile Chilwell was never going to travel that far to press Walker and was pinned back by Mahrez’ positioning anyway. As a result Maddison was left with somewhat of a dilemma in terms of dealing with Walker who was getting free around the right halfspace for City.

When Maddison pushed out towards Walker, he had Gundogan lurking behind him as the German picked up positions between the lines primarily in City’s right halfspace. Fuchs could sometimes step out to try and deal with this, but this was not always sufficient or executed with the right timing to prevent City from being able to combine through this space.

Aguero also made some nice dropping movements to facilitate third man combinations. Especially as Leicester’s midfield three could sometimes end up matched 3v3 with Gundogan, De Bruyne and Bernardo, the movements of Aguero to offer to receive to feet could be useful for City to solve this situation and begin combining.

So City created some issues for Leicester in their buildup. However once Leicester got back into a deep block with numbers in their own box, it was hard for City to find clear ways to create chances.

In the second half, Pep eventually made an adjustment to City’s possession shape, as Gundogan more often started playing deeper alongside Rodri, while Walker was also somewhat deeper. De Bruyne and Bernardo were now the two number tens for City in a 3-2-4-1.

It’s possible that Pep did this to prevent the aforementioned 3v3 matchup that could occur in the Leicester midfield zone and instead get players into the gaps in Leicester’s formation. With a double pivot they could draw out Leicester’s #8s into pressing Gundogan and Rodri, then try to find De Bruyne and Bernardo positioned in the halfspaces behind the Leicester #8s.

Dropping Walker into the back three with a double pivot in front also gave extra cover against the Leicester counter threat with the obvious presence of Vardy as well as substitute Barnes who arguably adds more speed and dribbling threat in the channels than Iheanacho who he replaced.