Kompany faces City exit
DODGY KEEPER AND BIZARRE AGUERO CALL ADD TO THE TURBULENCE AT CITY...
VINCENT KOMPANY is set to become the latest high-profile casualty of Pep Guardiola’s reign after the Manchester City captain was left out of the squad for the 4-0 Champions League thrashing at Barcelona.
However, City have moved swiftly to ease fears over Sergio Aguero’s future after he was only named among the substitutes on Wednesday night.
Kompany, 30, was fit and available to face Barcelona but Guardiola put teenage defender Pablo Maffeo on the bench instead. Kompany’s Belgium team-mate Kevin De Bruyne said: ‘That’s Pep’s choice. He must have had his reasons.’
Kompany has been plagued by muscle problems over the last two seasons and he was injured in his only start under Guardiola in the League Cup at Swansea City last month.
Insiders say Aguero has already signed a 12- month contract extension and the club will confirm shortly he has committed to the club until 2020.
PEP GUARDIOLA’S success at Barcelona over four years in charge at the Nou Camp appeared effortless at times. He inherited a great team, made it better and reaped the rewards.
As Guardiola flew back from Spain yesterday, well beaten and humbled by the club he took to new heights, the problems building up at Manchester City seemed to pose a far greater test of his fabled coaching skills.
Ever since City confirmed his appointment in February, it has been said that Guardiola (right) was taking on a tougher challenge than he faced at Barcelona or Bayern Munich.
There were always going to be issues transforming an ageing team that had seen better days into one that fitted the Guardiola mould.
The worrying thing for the new manager, as he digested a 4-0 defeat that leaves City’s Champions League hopes in some peril, is the issues that arose in the Nou Camp — notably events surrounding the sending-off of goalkeeper Claudio Bravo and the exclusion of top scorer Sergio Aguero — were largely of his own making.
Guardiola’s obsession with having a goalkeeper as comfortable with the ball at his feet as in his hands has already caused enough turbulence at the Etihad with the untidy departure of England goalkeeper Joe Hart to Torino.
Guardiola decided to replace Hart with one of Barcelona’s two goalkeepers, Marc-Andre ter Stegen or Claudio Bravo. It did not help matters when, on the eve of this game and two months after Bravo signed in a £ 15.4million deal, Guardiola let slip that Ter Stegen was his first choice.
Bravo was sent off in the 53rd minute for deliberate handball after passing straight to Luis Suarez when most keepers — Hart for one — would have chosen a safer option and cleared the danger. From that moment City were dead in the water. It is not the first time that Bravo has blundered. Nor is it the first time that Guardiola’s insistence on his players passing the ball short in their own penalty box at every opportunity has invited trouble.
The Spaniard was steadfast afterwards that he will not compromise on that, but it was interesting that Ter Stegen and Barcelona were happy to play the long ball when it made sense.
There is a question mark, too, over whether Guardiola has the calibre of defenders capable of implementing his plan.
John Stones was signed for £47.5m for that reason, but what of Nicolas Otamendi, Aleksandar Kolarov and Pablo Zabaleta, who was the subject of discussions between City and Inter Milan on Wednesday night over a possible move in January.
Vincent Kompany is one of City’s more cultured defenders, but the skipper was left out in Barcelona as teenager Pablo Maffeo took a place on the bench instead. Guardiola will be in the market for full backs next summer with Arsenal’s Hector Bellerin and David Alaba, from Bayern, already linked with City.
Kompany has been one of the cornerstones of the club’s success but, as in the case of Hart and Yaya Toure, it would now appear he is dispensable. Until now, however, Aguero has been practically untouchable and Guardiola’s decision to name the Argentine as a substitute in Barcelona was a peculiar one. Aguero’s failure to warm up beforehand only added to the intrigue and suggestions that playing against Paraguay last week after picking up a calf injury in a game against Peru five days earlier had not gone down well at the Etihad. Kevin De Bruyne played as a false nine in place of Aguero and admitted that it is not a position that suits him.
‘I’m not used to playing it,’ said De Bruyne. ‘Obviously it’s not my best position, but I’ll do what the coach asks me to and do my job.’
De Bruyne stressed that City have no need to change their approach, and there is certainly merit in the argument that they performed better on Wednesday night than in their four previous games against Barcelona, despite the scoreline.
But Barcelona have moved on after Guardiola and perhaps he needs to adapt, too.
City have failed to win in their last four games. Tottenham, Celtic and Barcelona have all played Pep at his own, high-pressing game and got results.
On Wednesday night, he was screaming for Stones and Otamendi to play higher up the pitch, but Barca midfielder Ivan Rakitic said: ‘If City push the line up and play high, one-versus-one, then you have to look for space (behind). They can’t occupy the whole pitch. With the quality we have, we looked for that.’
Guardiola will not take his painful return to the Nou Camp lying down. There will be a renewed determination to make City better, maybe even speed up the process. But, for now at least, the stardust remains in short supply.