Guardiola has all the fuel he needs to fire challenge
THE ACTIONS OF EIGHT OUT OF 10 CLUBS WILL NOT GO UNNOTICED
IF City needed any extra ammunition for an assault on the Premier League again next season, they now have it.
However and whenever this campaign ends, the Blues will be desperate to make the title theirs once again in whatever form the 2020/21 season takes.
They won’t be short of motivation. It could be Pep Guardiola’s final season in charge of the club and they will want to prove to Liverpool that their relative dip this year was simply a one-off.
But there’s been a feeling in recent weeks that Guardiola has been trying to engineer a siege mentality among his squad. Now the rest of the Premier League’s top clubs have finished that process for him.
City certainly feel a lot has gone against them this season. They’ve not had as much misfortune as they would have you believe, but then that’s how squads build a mentality that the world is out to get them.
From the Champions League ban to debatable VAR decisions, via Bernardo Silva’s suspension and a feeling that Liverpool have become the Premier League’s golden boys, City feel they’ve been hard done to this season.
Before the resumption of the Champions League in February Guardiola reportedly told his squad to use the injustices of their exits to Monaco, Liverpool and Tottenham over the previous three seasons as fuel.
In every tie the Blues boss felt a crucial decision went against his side and his plea looked to be working, with the Blues winning 2-1 against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu before the coronavirus pandemic saw the competition suspended.
Once the game has returned to normality and next season gets underway, Guardiola will have a much simpler message to try and ignite his squad’s sense of injustice: ‘Remember those clubs who tried to make sure you were kicked out of the Champions League.’
Like so much of football at the moment, the status of City’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over their two-year Champions League ban is unclear.
Yet an attempt by eight of the nine other clubs making up the Premier League’s top 10 – credit to Sheffield United for being able to think for themselves – to stop City playing in the Champions League if they ask that the punishment is delayed while the appeal is ongoing seems unnecessary.
Just let the process take its course. This will reinforce the view within the corridors of power at the Etihad that City’s Premier League rivals are ganging up against them.
Part of their appeal is likely to look at the financial make-up of their rivals domestically and in Europe.
Whatever the outcome of that appeal City can embrace being the Premier League’s bad boys next season.
This has made it clear to them that most of the league is against them, a view you can understand to a degree given UEFA’s assessment that they did break Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules.
None of this is the fault of Guardiola’s squad, who could yet be denied their best shot at European glory this season as the continent battles to control the coronavirus outbreak.
When domestic action does resume and next season’s title race begins, City’s players and staff shouldn’t forget the attempt of their rivals to keep them out of the Champions League, even if their appeal hasn’t been heard in time.