PEP’S GOT ALL THE POWER
Players wear what he tells them, eat what he tells them...and even go through the doors he chooses!
PEP GUARDIOLA has said it himself. Nothing in Manchester City’s present or future will match the drama of Sergio Aguero’s title-winning goal of May 2012.
Even when replayed almost six years on, there is still something about that strike in added time against QPR that is utterly spellbinding.
So the title clinched by Guardiola and his players by virtue of a rainy Manchester United defeat at home by West Bromwich on Sunday feels different already. It has seemed inevitable, if not from the very start of the season, then certainly from the onset of winter.
But what Premier League title win No 3 for City lacks in suspense and unpredictability, it more than makes up for in potential.
As funny as it sounds, that success of 2012 signalled not the start of something for manager Roberto Mancini but the end. A year later, City’s title had gone and so had their manager. This time, it should be very different. The modern Manchester City — with Guardiola and his allies at the heart — is now set up for enduring success.
Hegemony does not always arrive when you think it will in sport but City — with a bright coach, a young squad and yet more money to burn — would appear to have the tools to ensure that, for the rest, second place in the Premier League becomes the height of their ambitions.
It will not be this straightforward. It never is, happily.
Some of City’s rivals will improve next season.
It is hard to say what we will get from Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal but if Liverpool and Tottenham do not come on stronger, it will be a surprise.
But the bottom line is that City have a couple of furlongs’ start on the rest and it is very hard to imagine them giving that up.
The key to most things in football is good players but it is not everything. City proved that in 2012.
Back then, Mancini’s dressing room was unpredictable and temperamental. Not all of his team were even keen to join the open-top bus parade that followed that title win and things nosedived pretty quickly from that point on.
Over the course of that summer, Mancini and City’s board argued over new players and just about anything else that they could find to disagree about. Transfer targets were missed while other players were signed on the hoof. Winger Scott Sinclair — a spectacular failure — was signed from Swansea after Mancini realised on the way home from the pre-season tour in August that his team needed pace.
These days, City’s transfer targets have been in the system for weeks and months. It will be a surprise if deals for another central defender and a holding midfielder are not all but agreed with the players and their agents already.
The modern City have learned from recent mistakes and that is understandable, given there have been many. Fundamental to it all is that Guardiola — the manager — is now at the very centre of the whole process.
That was not the case with Mancini and he hated it. His title win earned him a new contract but no more power.
His successor, Manuel Pellegrini, also won a league title and took City to the last four of the Champions League. But the Chilean’s self-worth, security and ambition were never helped by the fact Guardiola was always being lined up to succeed him — and he knew it just as well as his players suspected it.
Guardiola has none of these problems. If the modern City have not quite been built in his image then he certainly has his thumbprints all over its recent redesign.
THE club used to be wary of giving their manager too much power, always worrying about what would happen when he left.
They watched United’s house fall down once Alex Ferguson walked away and vowed it would not happen to them.
So there is risk attached to what amounts to a volte face on that policy. Guardiola has influence that other Etihad coaches never had but City feel it has been worth it and who is to say they are wrong? Players and staff wear the clothes the manager chooses, eat the food he chooses and even enter the dressing rooms by the doors he chooses.
Like many managers, he is a control freak. The difference is that he is allowed to be because it works.
City would doubtless have liked some words from their coach yesterday to feed their supporters’ ravenous appetite for content about their title win. But Guardiola chose to say nothing and who is going to argue?
What matters now, then, is what happens next. Football director Txiki Begiristain’s mixed record in the market has improved in recent summers and he must deliver again this time. As Liverpool showed recently, there are holes in the Guardiola prototype.
But City have something special on which to build. We should not doubt that. Whether they win the Premier League next season will probably be down to them and nobody else.
That is a sobering thought for those whose task it is to rein them in.