Chelsea vs Man City: Can Guardiola finally outsmart his new nemesis? | OneFootball

It’s been a long time since a Premier League weekend kicked off with a match as big and exciting as the one coming our way from Stamford Bridge on Saturday lunchtime.

A replay of the Champions League final. The title holders vs the current title favourites. An early season six-pointer. Call it what you will, it should be a fascinating encounter between two top quality teams and you’d be insane to miss it (unless you support Manchester United or Aston Villa, in which case we’ll let you off).

Not that recent meetings between Chelsea and Manchester City have been particular highfalutin affairs though.

Last season’s FA Cup semi-final was a sluggish 1-0, the league game at the Etihad was a bizarre smash and grab, while in Porto the biggest one of them all was decided by Chelsea pouncing on a lapse in the City defence to clinch European football’s biggest prize.

But what those three matches all have in common is that Chelsea won, and you have to go back to October 2015 for the last time Pep Guardiola registered a victory over Thomas Tuchel, when his much-superior Bayern Munich side put Borussia Dortmund to the sword with a 5-1 thrashing.

We’re unlikely to see a similar scoreline on Saturday, however.

The job Tuchel has done since taking over Chelsea has been nothing short of remarkable and his record as Blues boss currently stands at 39 matches played, 27 wins, 2.26 points-per-match and two European trophies in the bag.

He’s got a long way to go before he catches up with Guardiola, mind. The ex-Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss is an old hand in the Premier League nowadays as he embarks upon his fifth season in charge at City and having lifted 10 domestic trophies in England, it’s fair to say he hasn’t done too badly so far.

Guardiola even possesses a slightly superior points-per-match record to Tuchel – 2.33 – but then Tuchel did beat him in the Champions League final, so it’s tough to say who actually has the upper hand in this tactical tête-à-tête.

And it feels like Saturday’s match could well be decided more by what happens on magnetic tactics boards than west London grass.

Chelsea have conceded just 27 goals in Tuchel’s 39 matches in charge and they’re so well drilled that right now, it’s quite hard to imagine anyone breaking them down.

City, meanwhile, have scored 11 Premier League goals this season but 10 of them came in two matches and their striker-less system looked a little blunt in the defeat at Tottenham and last weekend’s Southampton stalemate.

Even with a striker, the Premier League champions often come unstuck against teams who play with a back three and considering Chelsea’s back three just so happens to be the strongest in Europe at the moment, scoring goals could well be an issue for City again this weekend.

Not only that, but in Romelu Lukaku Chelsea have one of the most in-form strikers around and even if John Stones or Aymeric Laporte recover from injury in time to partner Rúben Dias, the Belgian is going to cause all kinds of havoc in City’s backline.

Then again, City have a pretty good Belgian of their own who may just be hitting his stride at the perfect time, and if Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden are both on the pitch together, any team anywhere should be frightened to death.

But all the individual brilliance in the world may not be able to influence what is sure to be a majestic game of chess between two Grandmasters, and if there aren’t many goals there should at least be plenty of intrigue.

Unbeaten Chelsea will lose at some point but win this weekend and their already strong title credentials are going to be looking pretty iron-clad.

As for City, this game kicks off a daunting week in which they also face Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool and if they lose both Premier League fixtures, it might be time to start peeling those gold badges off their sleeves already.

Win away at Chelsea though, and the possibilities will suddenly start to look endless again.