Pause the video of Roma’s goal against Manchester City just as the ball reached Radja Nainggolan and City’s problem is clear. There’s the back four in classic saucer shape, the full-backs slightly advanced of the centre-backs and there, where one of the central defenders should be, is a huge hole into which Francesco Totti is beginning to run. Vincent Kompany is perhaps 10 yards advanced of Martín Demichelis, looking to close Nainggolan down and never getting close enough to him.

It is easy to criticise Kompany in such a situation – and there is a growing suspicion that he has a tendency to overcommit, going for balls he has no chance of reaching – but in this instance, perhaps, his movement was understandable. After all, Nainggolan played the pass instantly; had he taken a touch, Kompany would probably have got to him and been able to pressure him into returning the ball to his midfield. The question, rather, is why Kompany was pulled forwards, why Nainggolan was left untended in what Ottmar Hitzfeld terms the red zone, that central area 10-30 yards outside the penalty area from which so many goals stem. And to answer that you have to look at the two central midfielders, Fernandinho and Yaya Touré, both of whom were at least 10 yards upfield of Nainggolan.

That the counterattack is a dangerous means of attack is hardly news. The Uefa technical report for last season notes that 61 goals in the Champions League were scored from counterattacks, 23% of the total goals scored from open play. “No fewer than 13 of Real Madrid’s goals – almost a third – came from counters,” it goes on, “the most frequent modus operandi being a ball win in midfield [often just inside opposition territory]and a quick launch of the ‘Formula 1’ forwards, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale. Seven counterattack goals came from a simple ball win + one pass + solo run combination.”

Think of the way they overwhelmed Bayern Munich in the semi-final, or Gareth Bale’s goal in the final, and the importance of the counterattack to Real Madrid’s success is clear (even if the counterattacking of the semi-final was rather forced on them by the radical possession game of Bayern). “Counterattacking is now much better organised and well thought out,” Carlo Ancelotti said. “It’s not just about launching a long ball forward – counters tend to be more elaborately planned and can create more goals.”

Yet the Uefa technical report also notes that the number of goals scored on the counterattack had dropped from 79 – 27% of the total from open play – the previous season. That isn’t a one-off fall. A report by Andy Roxburgh, then Uefa’s technical director, noted that in the 2005-06 season, 40% of goals from open play came from counterattacks. The implication is clear, and startling: counterattacking is becoming a less productive attacking mode.

The theory is supported by Opta’s breakdown of the past five seasons. Their figures are not quite the same in that they measure “fast breaks” – defined as “an attacking play at speed that starts in the team’s own half and has to involve the opponent’s defensive line not being in their standard shape” – but they also show a decline from 8.5% of the total in 2010-11 to 7.8% in 2011-12 to 7.3% in 2012-13 and 6.4% last season. (Because City’s back four was – just about – back in position, Totti’s goal was not designated as a fast break by Opta; fast breaks are a subset of counterattacks but are indicative of the overall pattern).

When José Mourinho first arrived at Chelsea in 2004, he said his training focused on four aspects: on attack, on defence, on the transition from defence to attack and on the transition from attack to defence. That last aspect is often forgotten, partly because it is so hard to discern: it is an absence, an opponent not being able to counter because of the effective rapid reassembly of the defensive structure. Yet, necessarily, it is just as vital as the defence-to-attack transition, and the suggestion is that the best teams are getting better at it.

What is pressing, in fact but the most proactive form of the counter-counter? In an interview with Simon Kuper in The Blizzard, Albert Cepallas, who is now the assistant manager of Brondby but used to be part of Pep Guardiola’s backroom staff, explained how Barcelona reacted when possession was lost. They reasoned that in the moments immediately after a player had made a tackle or an interception, he was vulnerable: he might be off-balance, he would probably have just have undergone a sharp expenditure of energy and his focus would have been transferred away from the pitch as a whole to the ball, meaning he was likely, for a brief time, to be unaware of his passing options.

Ideally the player who had lost the ball would be the first to seek to regain it, backed up two or three team-mates a few metres back, looking to shut down the obvious passing options or pounce if the player with the ball went by the first presser. “You see that few teams have the individual skills to play themselves out from under pressure,” said René Meulensteen, then a coach at Manchester United, after Barça’s victory over United in the 2011 Champions League final. “Guardiola saw that very well. But Barcelona’s is also the playing style with the highest degree of difficulty. You need players with the tactical qualities to shift very quickly from possession to defence, and who are physically capable of doing that constantly. It’s a very short moment of hunting the prey.”

What was really fascinating was what happened if possession was not regained straightaway. After five seconds, Capellas said, Barça would retreat and look to assume a compact shape, following the guideline Arrigo Sacchi issues at Milan in the late 80s of no more than five metres from the front of the team to the back, denying the opposition space to pass through them.

Barcelona’s is not the only way – and there are some, such as the former Hibernian manager John Collins, who doubt whether amid the hurly-burly of a game players really can count up the five seconds – but it’s that work, knowing when to press, when to drop back, how to deny the opposition space to attack, that has become far more sophisticated in recent years.

A simpler way is simply to ensure that one of the central midfielders stays deep, acting as a breakwater in front of the two centre-backs. When a team plays with three in central midfield, that occurs almost naturally. Perhaps City will do that if they get all three of Fernandinho, Touré and Fernando fit. But so long as they persist with a central two, they must ensure that the sort of space Nainggolan enjoyed and exploited doesn’t recur. They can do that by ensuring one of the two sits, or they can reduce the space between the lines – something they did to some effect towards the end of last season.

Opta stats show City’s problems clearly. Last season, 6% of all goals in the Champions League and 5% of all goals in the Premier League were defined by them as fast breaks. In both competitions, 14% of the goals City conceded were the result of fast breaks. Now, of course, the more a team dominates possession, the more likely it is that the goals it concedes come form breaks, but still, that suggests a problem. Already this season, two of the seven goals City have conceded in the Premier League have come from fast breaks.

Transitions are vital in the modern game, but it’s becoming increasing apparent that, particularly at European level, what separates the very best from the rest is less the counter than the counter-counter, stopping your opponents from breaking. City simply aren’t doing that.