Manchester City Star Reveals What Pep Guardiola Is Struggling With The Most In Premier League Football

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Kevin De Bruyne has revealed that Pep Guardiola has been left “frustrated” by other Premier League teams playing long-ball tactics against his Manchester City side, 90min reports.

The Belgium international told the Daily Mirror that the Spaniard was becoming increasingly annoyed at seeing other English top flight teams change their style of play when they come up against City’s possession-based mentality.

Guardiola is used to facing opponents who play the same way that his sides do, having previously managed Barcelona and Bayern Munich in Spain and Germany respectively, but De Bruyne said he believes that the 45-year-old is consistently lamenting having to face teams that employ direct tactics against his charges.

He said:

“What Pep is mostly surprised about is that there are still a lot of teams playing with long balls.

“He sometimes thinks the teams will try to play football because they do that against other teams, but if it is against us, they change their way of playing. I think that sometimes he must be annoyed by it.

“He puts so much time and energy into looking for things, where spaces might be, but then the opponent uses the long ball. I think he must sometimes think ‘why am I doing all this work’.”

De Bruyne admitted that Guardiola has had to adapt to the rigours of Premier League football since he took charge at the Etihad in the summer, with the ex-Barcelona star having to tweak his footballing philosophy to combat the fast paced, frenetic and more physical nature of the top tier in England.

He continued:

“He’s not searching, but changing. That’s Pep. On the one hand, he adapts, on the other hand he always wants to play dominant football and force others into trouble.

“The problem is that a lot of teams are playing very defensively against us, so we have to try to find a solution. Sometimes it’s not so much fun to watch and for us it’s not so much fun to play, because that’s not our football, but we have to cope with it.”