Quique: ‘I will show the players a good plan for Manchester City’

Quique Sanchez Flores doesn’t strike you as one of those who spends his down time reading forums, poring over chats on Facebook groups or monitoring conversations on Twitter. It’s probably just as well.

While some have been picking holes in the team selection and tactics of the Europa League winner after three unbeaten games, the Spaniard has been fully focussed on the task of formulating a plan to take to the Etihad Stadium for the most daunting of tasks, against Manchester City. He had barely uttered his last word at Thursday’s press conference before he was out the door at Sopwell House and off to the training ground to continue what he loves best: coaching and tactical analysis.

He is too shrewd to give away what he has spotted in watching re-runs of City games or what he previously gleaned from playing against teams coached by Manuel Pellegrini in Spain. But if you listen carefully, really carefully, to what he said in his pre-match press briefing you got the slightest glimpse into where his mind his going.

“Aguero and Silva have good relationship on the pitch,” he said. “It’s very difficult to stop them in the last third but it is important for us to know what is happening to the ball before it gets to them.”

Spot it? The bit where he said about cutting off the supply to the Argentine and Spaniard? Could Sanchez Flores be about to alter his favoured 4-2-3-1 and field a formation with the emphasis on pressing the defence of City and stopping Bacary Sagna, Vincent Kompany, Eliaquim Mangala and Aleksandar Kolarov from threading passes into the feet of the dynamic pair?

“I like to think a lot about this [changing] and if we need to change, we will,” he said. “But we don’t have reasons to change too much. I will show the players a good plan and they will follow this on the pitch. We need to communicate these ideas with the players and see that we have opportunities.”

The logic of changing being that if Aguero and Silva don’t have quality possession, in the final third, then they can’t hurt you. Miguel Layun and, say, Odion Ighalo, could, just could, play higher and wider to stop the full-backs receiving easy possession, with Troy Deeney asked to occupy the two centre-halves. Jose Manuel Jurado may sit just behind Deeney and prevent Fernandinho and Yaya Toure from dropping deep and picking up easy possession off the back four.

“It’s not impossible to stop them, nothing is impossible,” he said. “It’s the opposite – everything is possible. We scored at Everton so why not score at Manchester City?”

Sanchez Flores loves nothing better than to study the opposition. It’s what makes him tick. He says he has put just as much time into analysing City as he did in studying Everton, West Brom and Southampton.

“We know about Manchester City because everybody does but it is important to find the key and weakness of the opponent,” he said. “In this case it is very difficult but not impossible. We have power, we have tools and we have confidence.”

They will also need to scale new heights in terms of work-rate levels if they stand a chance of getting anything.

“We have to be 100 per cent concentrated when we play against one of the best teams in Europe,” said Jose Manuel Jurado. “We have to give everything we have got and hopefully get a result.”

Jurado said in the week that Sanchez Flores is a more offensive coach than the one he worked under at Atletico Madrid, but it will be his defensive expertise that comes to the fore this afternoon. He won’t be parking the new Clarkes Coaches team bus at the Etihad. Neither will he deploy a man-marking system.

“They have an amazing team, a very clever team,” said Sanchez Flores. “They have good strikers, power in the middle, power in defence. It is difficult because if you try to mark Silva, Aguero and Navas it is not good for our system. If we make a plan to stop these kind of players, it should be a collective plan. We know the velocity of Navas, the speed and power of Aguero, the intelligence of Silva and the power of Yaya. They are the keys of the team. We try to solve this and prepare the best plan possible.”

Sanchez Flores led Getafe to a 2-1 win over Real Madrid in 2005. Allan Nyom can also boast famous wins, against Madrid and Barcelona.

“We have the idea to get a good result,” said Watford’s head coach. “Why not? This is football, it’s 11 v 11. Our confidence is up, we have no reason for it to go down. We have to play.”

Click below to read the thoughts of Sanchez Flores and Jurado on City’s dangermen.

How on earth do you stop Aguero and Silva? Best ask Jurado and Quique. http://t.co/q78LfOdIGQ #watfordfc #MCFC pic.twitter.com/TtBOIC4xhU — WD Sport (@WDSport_) August 28, 2015

More Watford related news