Villa & Pedro also spent a lot of time operating in the half-spaces (once the team had the ball in the opponent's half). But that wasn't a problem since they were very mobile (off the ball runs) + Messi was often dropping deep to combine w/ Xavi-Iniesta. https://twitter.com/ribadaniel/status/1275919382645026816?s=19
There's a lot of dogmatism abt this topic. As if only 1 option was valid (wide vs narrow). Villa & Pedro's positioning under Guardiola was more fluid than ppl think. It depends on the #9's profile, what you're trying to achieve w/ the CMs & obviously the day's gameplan.