Revealed: Manchester City’s intricate behind-the-scenes work on attacking patterns | OneFootball

Manchester City assistant coach Kolo Toure is conducting behind-the-scenes work with the club’s forwards to improve their attacking output after last season’s profligacies.

Pep Guardiola brought in the former Manchester City and Liverpool defender as part of his staff after the departures of Carlos Vicens, Inigo Dominguez and Juanma Lillo earlier in the summer.

Following a brief stint alongside Guardiola and fellow assistant coach Pepijn Lijnders at the FIFA Club World Cup in the United States in June, Toure was given a permanent role in Manchester City’s backroom staff in pre-season.

The summer months have proved to be a sliding doors period at the Etihad Stadium, with newly-appointed sporting director Hugo Viana orchestrating a series of changes in Guardiola’s first-team squad and behind-the-scenes at the Etihad Stadium.

Guardiola has extolled the virtues of Lijnders and Toure and hailed their respective impacts on the mood around the dressing room since their appointments, with the Manchester City manager himself stressing on the importance of fresh faces in the building every few years.

City endured their most challenging year under Guardiola in the recent campaign and after a third-place league finish with 71 points last term, the Blues are looking to challenge on all fronts once again as they aim to win a fifth league title in six seasons.

Kevin De Bruyne, Kyle Walker, James McAtee and Scott Carson have all left the club, with Jack Grealish, Vitor Reis, Claudio Echeverri and Sverre Nypan joining Everton, Girona, Bayer Leverkusen and Middlesbrough on loan for the 2025-26 campaign.

Ederson, Stefan Ortega Moreno, Manuel Akanji and Kalvin Phillips could all leave before the September 1 transfer deadline, which means further reinforcements could be needed should City decide to progress their squad revamp into the final days of the window.

Meanwhile, Toure has been busy working with Manchester City’s forwards and attempting to identify and encourage specific combination work between attackers, as reported by Jordan Campbell writing for The Athletic.

Moreover, Erling Haaland and Jeremy Doku have spent significant time together lately to establish an ‘unspoken code’ to improve their link-up play, with City overly reliant on Haaland to score last term after Julian Alvarez joined Atletico Madrid for £82 million a year ago.

Phil Foden was a shadow of his 2023-24 PFA Players’ Player of the Year winning self last season and De Bruyne struggled to match his form and fitness of his peak years, with January signing Omar Marmoush shouldering some of the goalscoring burden after his mid-season arrival from Eintracht Frankfurt.

However, City’s wide players remain desperately short of the attacking standards set by the likes of Leroy Sane, Raheem Sterling and Riyad Mahrez in Guardiola’s 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2020-21 title-winning sides and Toure is seemingly seeking to correct that wrong.