CHASING QUADRUPLE COMES AT A COST FOR GUARDIOLA’S CITY
Relentless workload takes toll on style of play
PEP GUARDIOLA arrived at manchester City with a vision for high quality, beautiful football. He wanted his players to play well and had faith that the trophies would follow.
Now, City have a shopping list of matches to get through. if they do go on to clinch the Quadruple — something Guardiola claims is ‘almost impossible’ — they will have played 64 games this season. Their title rivals Liverpool, by comparison, can only play a maximum of 53.
Such a relentless workload means you risk losing some of that beauty, and we saw that against Brighton in their Fa Cup semi-final at Wembley.
Guardiola will be concerned that his team could not play as well as he would have wanted. in the end, they did just enough to get the job done.
The goal that City scored was a rare moment of beauty in the tie and it turned out to be the winner.
it could not have been choreographed any better. The diagonal ball from aymeric Laporte, the lay-off by Bernardo Silva, the cross from Kevin de Bruyne and the finish by Gabriel Jesus.
you have to give credit to Brighton for the way they reacted to conceding inside five minutes, too. They filled the midfield, slowed City down and tried to make life difficult.
But Guardiola will not want his team’s high standards to slip too much amid this heavy workload. For him, that is what their success is built on. That is what turned them into record- breaking Premier League champions last season.
City’s trip to Tottenham in the Champions League tomorrow ought to be interesting. There will be an extraordinary atmosphere as they walk out at an unfamiliar stadium. it is a lion’s den and Spurs have enjoyed a longer break than City, having not played since Wednesday.
Guardiola will want to see his side play better than they did at Wembley because the game against Brighton felt more like a box-ticking exercise. He will hope his players dig deep and show they still have enough in the tank to play his way.