A huge amount has been written in the last week about formations and where City's tactics have come unstuck against firstly Barcelona and then Liverpool away.
One of the better of these was by Gary Neville in the Telegraph where he concludes a possible move to 3-5-2 may be the only way to get the best from Aguero, Silva, and Toure. He also admits to being wrong in writing off Roberto Mancini's attempts to do exactly that in 2013! So if the pundits are even debating with themselves, it seems clear to me that there is no easy answer.
Pellegrini has long been a supporter of 4-4-1-1 or 4-4-2, using it successfully in European campaigns with first Villarreal (Semi Finalists in 2006), and then with Malaga in 2013 all the way to the Quarter Finals, only to see some dubious refereeing against Dortmund rob them of a deserved semi final place.
4-4-2 has seen the most exciting football at Man City in years, with goal records falling more often than Ashley Young. The problem with such cavalier football, if there is one, is it requires 100% belief and 100% hard work off the ball in closing teams down. Pellegrini undoubtedly has that belief but maybe the players lack enough conviction against the top teams to make it work. As Pellegrini says here it requires intelligence from the players to adapt the system during a game. The problem is that since Christmas it has taken a half time team talk to get the players to adapt, so maybe for the big games a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 is required just to take the need for thinking away.
Pellegrini wasn't nicknamed the engineer for nothing and as shown in successfully moving away from 4-4-2 because of a long list of injuries before Christmas he and the team are perfectly capable of adapting - so maybe now is that time.
