Pep: Don’t be an incredible sulk!
PEP Guardiola has warned his high-flying players that any let-up will see them dropped from the City squad.
The Blues boss is facing a particularly tough team selection problem for Monday night’s trip to face Tottenham at Wembley, with Kevin de Bruyne back from injury.
He adds to a midfield department that already has Bernardo Silva, Fernandinho and David Silva in top-class form, and there are no obvious candidates to make way.
Bernardo underlined his credentials by scoring with his first involvement as a substitute at Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday, while Riyad Mahrez, Raheem Sterling, David Silva and Leroy Sane have all been in sparkling form. Guardiola acknowledged that he faces a tough choice.
“It’s always a problem,” he said. “I am unfair. Guys are not going to play who deserve to play.
“When they train in a bad way they are out for themselves but when they try it’s unfair.”
But while some noses will be put out of joint if they are not picked on Monday, Guardiola warns that any public shows of unhappiness will not be tolerated.
“They are professional,” he said. “They are upset when not selected, during and after they’re not happy but when they come back to training they must be happy. The only way to convince me is to convince their teammates. If they have bad moods, faces, then they will have a big problem.”
MAURICIO Pochettino and Pep Guardiola have not always been on the same page but the City boss has his Tottenham counterpart to thank for providing one of the most important lessons about the Premier League.
The Blues had won their first six league games under their new manager in a manner that had some asking if they could go unbeaten for the whole campaign, but Tottenham delivered a crushing reality check with a ferocious performance in October 2016.
It was only three points in the table, yet the nature of Tottenham’s win alerted everybody including Guardiola’s players - to the fact that City were very much beatable.
“We started quite good in terms of results,” the manager recalled, 18 months after the event.
“The way we played, some games it was not good. At White Hart Lane against Tottenham, the people say: ‘OK, City are going to win.’
“And we face Tottenham, a Mauricio Pochettino team, and see how good they were. I said ‘Wow, we are going to suffer. This season is going to be tough.’
“The people didn’t think about Tottenham going to win the league and I suffered, I lived, I experienced it for the first time away at White Hart Lane against physicality, an amazing team the way they play, high pressing, good build up.
“I said to my friends, ‘It will be tough this season here,’ and we started to drop points.”
If Guardiola spent much of the rest of his first season in England trying to convince the players his methods would work, he also spent considerable time thinking about Spurs.
There was the way Pochettino had set his team up, with a fast, fierce press not typical of the Premier League that showed there is room for other influences to have an impact.
Tottenham also exposed City’s ageing side; Guardiola’s players were nearly three years older than Tottenham’s that season, leading to a radical overhaul at the Etihad that saw City with the second-youngest XI on average by the start of the
title-winning season. The English factor was crucial too.
Pochettino has garnered a reputation for bringing young English talent through and on that day at White Hart Lane Guardiola saw a distinctly English character to the side despite the contributions of other players and their Argentine coach.
Kyle Walker, Danny Rose and Dele Alli all received warm words on more than one occasion from Guardiola, who likes to use players from the country he is coaching in as essential members of his team and squad.
Amid a pretty special transfer window in the summer of 2017, Walker must go down as one of the most important signings.
A ready-made defender with crucial Premier League experience to go with the hunger to better himself, the seasoned international helped revolutionise a key position in Guardiola’s team and also - together with Raheem Sterling, Fabian Delph and John Stones - helped give City more of an English feel. From a club that had struggled for English talent under Manuel Pellegrini, last season there were four regulars in the starting XI along with the emergence of Phil Foden. Having been outclassed in his first game with Spurs, Guardiola learned quickly and enjoyed three thumping victories against Pochettino last year - a 3-0 friendly win in Nashville, a 4-1 drubbing at the Etihad and a 3-1 commanding result at Wembley that ultimately clinched them the title. Going into Monday’s meeting, the question is whether the Tottenham manager has taken enough from those games to be able to do what no English team has managed this season and beat this City team.