Guardiola hails Delph as City’s unlikely hero
PEP GUARDIOLA ended 2016 by watching his side lose 1-0 at Liverpool on New Year’s Eve. It left Manchester City a distant third in the table, 10 points behind champions-elect Chelsea, with the attack-minded manager being mocked for saying: ‘I am not a coach for tackles.’ A year later, Guardiola’s reputation is vastly enhanced. Victory at Crystal Palace would earn City a 19th straight league win to equal the manager’s European record achieved at Bayern Munich. Reflecting on an extraordinary 2017 in which City have scored 141 goals and lost just five games out of 58, Guardiola would be entitled to stick up two fingers at his critics. Instead, the former Barcelona manager questions why he could not get the juggernaut rolling quicker. ‘Last season, I never thought of playing Fabian Delph at full-back,’ he says. ‘Now it’s, “Ah, the brilliant Pep. How talented he is”. Why didn’t I do that last season?’ The mention of Delph is significant. While Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling and new goalkeeper Ederson have rightly earned praise, the manager believes the team’s extraordinary consistency is down to the players who have come in when required; less-heralded figures such as Eliaquim Mangala, Danilo and Ilkay Gundogan. ‘You cannot create something when people who are not playing are making problems,’ he insists. ‘Bad faces, bad behaviour from those guys — when that happens, forget it. ‘But the guys who didn’t play regularly here and are now playing more, they are exceptional. Without that, you cannot do it.’ Perhaps the most interesting part of the Pep revolution is that the bulk of his record-breaking team were here before he arrived.
Guardiola made six signings in 2017 and of those only two, Ederson and Kyle Walker, are regular starters in the team chasing a Premier League goals record, unbeaten league season and unprecedented Quadruple, with January arrival Gabriel Jesus often interchanged with Aguero.
‘I knew about the City players a bit before I got here because I saw them on TV and I spoke with Txiki (Begiristain, sporting director). But you have to be here to really know them,’ he stresses.
‘Nine of the players in the team this season also played last season. So there is something we didn’t do good last season, something I missed with my staff. We haven’t changed seven, eight players, though the new players give energy, like Kyle.
‘Sometimes you need more time to see things. When Mendy is injured, we have a midfield player, but he is smart, he is a real leader, Fabian Delph. That is why I always give credit to the players.’
City have become synonymous with some of the best attacking play seen in English football. But as Jose Mourinho and others have pointed out, City are no choirboys. If they fear a breakaway, they commit a tactical foul. Their defensive record is the best in the league and their only defeat since April came in a Champions League dead rubber against Shakhtar Donetsk.
They have scored seven against Stoke, six against Watford and put five past West Bromwich, Monaco, Huddersfield, Crystal Palace (twice), Watford and Liverpool.
In pre-season, Guardiola felt confidence levels surge after his team beat Tottenham 3-0 and Champions League holders Real Madrid 4-1 in America.
He says: ‘Though nothing counts in pre-season, we were able to say, “Wow, we can compete against them”. We started to build something — the way we trained, the ideas on and off the pitch, the way we want to live and how we want to be.’
Guardiola knows bumps in the road lie ahead. The lunchtime game at Palace will be City’s ninth in December and they have at least another seven in January, including two legs of the Carabao Cup semi-final against Bristol City. ‘I am worried. Three competitions I have handled many times, but never four,’ he says. When he returns from South London to toast the new year, Guardiola insists he will remain humble, because the moment you think you’ve cracked it, football kicks you in the teeth.
‘It is not about saying, “Now I am right and you are wrong”, he says. ‘We’ll be losers at some stage and people will say what we have to do. That is normal. All the managers know that. We are in a world where you back the winners.’