Flying start is key to Pep’s World Cup plan
CITY may have dominated the Premier League under Pep Guardiola in terms of titles, but the journey to get their hands on the trophy hasn’t always been straightforward.
Aside from the 100-point campaign, the Blues have been pushed all the way by Liverpool as they have fought on four fronts most years and needed to find every bit of energy to maintain standards three times a week for months on end.
The fact City have put long winning runs together in winter periods has been a key element in their title-winning seasons of 2018/19, 2020/21 and 2021/22. And those three campaigns all have the same thing in common – that ability to put together a long winning run to put the pressure on Liverpool.
On the one hand, that is the sign of an incredible team, but on the other, the fact those runs were needed points towards another common factor in those seasons - a slow start.
Guardiola was philosophical when assessing City’s start to this season, with six points won from six and no goals conceded.
“We are not champions of the Premier League, that is for sure,” he said after the Bournemouth win. “Just more than 100 points to play for but nothing to complain about, especially zero goals.
“The fact that we concede one shot on target against Bournemouth and last week West Ham, Antonio the header and Declan Rice shot at goal. Apart from that we didn’t concede much and that is the most important thing.
“We have the desire to regain the ball and with the ball we are really well organised in our patterns.
“Every time we lose the ball we don’t concede, the runners, the counter-attacks, that is so important.”
As much as City’s goalscoring is taking the headlines – mainly how Erling Haaland fits into the attack – it’s telling Guardiola is focusing on the solidity of his defence, with his subsequent comments explaining how he’s already looking at the bigger picture of the Blues’ title chances.
He continued: “We cannot forget three seasons ago when Liverpool won the Premier League we lost five points in the first five games, two seasons ago when we were champions we lost seven points in the first five games and last season we were champions and we lost five points in the first five games. “Always in these periods we drop points, we have to make 12, 13, 14 games in a row – winning, winning winning and this season it’s not going to happen because when we are strong in October, November, December it is World Cup so they don’t allow us to play. So it’s important we have to be consistent.” Guardiola is always quick to insist the title isn’t won in the opening stages of a campaign – although it can very much be lost like in 2019/20 – and those 14-game winning stretches to recover a slow start are never guaranteed.
He’s previously referred to this season as two in one, disrupted by the World Cup, with a title in the second half only possible with some solid form in the first. Nobody knows how the tournament in Qatar will affect players this
The more wins they establish, the better chance they have of minimising the unknown World Cup risks
winter, and City would expect many of their squad to be involved in the competition until the latter stages.
It’s sensible to be treating every opportunity to win points now as crucial. Maybe that’s why Guardiola last week said there will be no major rotation until the midweek fixtures begin again, with a relatively favourable schedule in August offering a chance to get lots of points on the board quickly.
The more wins they can establish before the World Cup, and the fewer goals they can concede, the better chance they have of minimising the unknown risks of the post-World Cup fixtures.
City visibly took their foot off the gas in the second half against Bournemouth with a 3-0 lead, after doing the same following Haaland’s second at West Ham last week.
It could be there will be a finer balance this season between managing games more pragmatically in the second half rather than chasing more and more goals and using unnecessary energy or risking the chance of conceding.
That may not be as exciting to watch as the big ruthless wins, or lengthy winning runs, but Guardiola might know it presents a far better chance of defending the title.
Maybe ‘boring, boring City’ will be the champions this year, after two years of the innovative winning machine we’ve come to expect.