In the perfect world of Pep Guardiola, this is a crisis ANDY
THE big fella – a centre-half by trade – lumbering upfront, the goalkeeper launching with desperate gusto.
Vincent Kompany, a substitute, the target man, Claudio Bravo taking aim at the target. On Pep Guardiola’s watch. This is a coach who normally rages when a pass is longer than his trousers.
But for just a very, very, few, brief moments, even for Guardiola, any way of winning this match would do.
Yes, idealism streaks through everything he utters – and it did when he reflected on an opportunity wasted in pretty epic, double penalty-missing fashion.
Yes, the total football template that produced a dominant but ultimately indecisive performance will never be fundamentally altered.
But in Guardiola’s private, perfect world, three matches without a success – and with the Nou Camp looming like a tank on the horizon – is a crisis. Full-blown.
That is why he was trying everything – even Kompany up front.
It is not a crisis, of course – nothing remotely resembling one.
You probably couldn’t even find anyone in the febrile phone-in world to suggest it is a crisis. Even if they were half-cut. And in calm analysis – we played very well and didn’t win, being the handy summation – Guardiola did not look or sound like a coach deeply troubled. Yet he did concede that and a Nolito header was the only joy they found amidst Everton’s massed ranks.
Unusually for Silva, De Bruyne and Raheem Sterling, a lot of wrong options were taken high up the pitch.
Other faults were John Stones’ culpability in the formative stages of Romelu Lukaku’s brilliant strike and that uncertainty from the spot.
He doesn’t bother at the moment, but it might be an idea if Guardiola has the odd penalty- practising session.
As for Stones, his elegance camouflages his fallibility. Trying to make an intervention that is clearly over-ambitious is his main fallibility.
Clearly one of his pet projects, Guardiola still has some heavy lifting to do with Stones. He actually didn’t have a great deal to do, Stones, such was his team’s superiority.
On this evidence – and maybe giddy with the delirium of a draw – Ronald Koeman declared City the best team he has managed against.
They will need to be better than the best Koeman has managed against if they are to take anything away from Pep’s home. Guardiola knows that. He loves winning as much as he loves pressing and passing – and not often in his managerial career has he had to go three matches without doing it.
That is why in real life it isn’t, but in Pep’s private, perfect world, this is a crisis. Full-blown.
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