Is 'Guardiola's right-hand' Manchester City's most important summer signing?

Manchester City has invested over £150 million on five new players this summer, but Pep Guardiola's most significant acquisition may not have cost a penny—and he won't be playing any football, either. In early June, Pep Lijnders, the second-most important coaching figure of the Jürgen Klopp era at Liverpool, became Guardiola's new right-hand man at Manchester City.

This move should have been a bigger story. Lijnders is widely credited with shaping much of Liverpool's day-to-day training and a substantial portion of Klopp's tactical evolution. His hiring suggests Guardiola is preparing for a major tactical overhaul, one that will be navigated with the input of a coach whose concepts of counter-pressing and vertical attacking play were seen as the very antidote to Guardiola's famous positional play.

While the contrast between the two philosophies is often overstated—both coaches borrowed from one another—Lijnders, like Klopp, is far more concerned with aggressive, high-octane attacking football and the opportunities that emerge during transitions. Lijnders’ appointment appears to confirm Guardiola's belief that modern Premier League football is shifting towards the "Kloppite" style, and the data supports him.

The tactical shift

Guardiola himself recently told TNT Sports, "Today, modern football is the way Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and Liverpool play. Modern football is not positional. You have to ride the rhythm." This is a huge statement from the man whose "positional play" philosophy has defined the sport for the past 15 years. But it's also a spot-on observation. Over the last five years, data shows a rise in fast breaks and direct attacks, while PPDA (a measure of pressing intensity) has decreased, indicating a more aggressive, high-pressing league.

Guardiola was already experimenting with a subtly more direct style last season. A comparison of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 campaigns shows City's possession share dropped from 65.5% to 61.3%, while their total number of fast breaks jumped by 36% (from 22 to 30). We saw more long balls from Ederson and more direct dribbling from January signing Omar Marmoush, a player who epitomizes this new approach.

Marmoush, it seems, was the first signing of what could be called "Man City 2.0," a rebuild that will shift Guardiola, Lijnders, and the team toward a more Klopp-like direction.

New signings point to a new philosophy

The signings that followed Marmoush further highlight this strategic shift. Rayan Cherki (from Lyon) and Tijjani Reijnders (from AC Milan) have both arrived this summer. Like Marmoush, their player profiles point to more carrying of the ball through the lines and fewer of the neatly choreographed passing triangles that have been a hallmark of Guardiola's teams. Data from last season is stark: compared with City's three most-used central midfielders in 2024-25, Cherki, Reijnders, and Marmoush all scored considerably higher for "progressive carries" (a carry of the ball at least five meters toward the opponent's goal) and "attempted dribbles."

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The signing of Rayan Ait-Nouri also alludes to this new, more dynamic approach. After two seasons of using central midfielders and center-backs in full-back positions to prioritize control and discipline, Guardiola has made an emphatic change in direction. Ait-Nouri is one of Europe's most attacking full-backs, ranking second in the Premier League for dribbles completed among defenders (63) and sixth among full-backs for progressive carries (89).

Ait-Nouri's arrival confirms Guardiola is moving away from packing the team with midfielders and is ceding some control in favor of more urgent, vertical attacking football.

Manchester City fans now face a summer of intriguing questions. How will such an explosive attacking pair as Ait-Nouri and Jeremy Doku work together on the left? How will Marmoush and Cherki fit into the same attacking midfield space? With Lijnders at his side, Guardiola is clearly working on something new—and it could be his sharpest tactical shift yet.