CHANGING OF THE GUARD Pep still adapting to English game
PEP GUARDIOLA accepts he isn’t going to change English football … but admits English football is changing him.
The Spanish boss arrived at Manchester City in the summer with a reputation as one of the best coaches – if not best coach – on the planet.
And when his team started the season in blistering form, many thought he was going to have it all his own way.
The season has not played out like that, though, and that has led to some serious questions over whether Guardiola’s methods and style of play will work here as well as they did at Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
Guardiola said: “I’m not going to change England and I don’t want to do that. Of course, it’s going to change me.
“That’s why I came here – to be changed. That is nice. When I do the same thing all my career, 15 or 20 years as a coach, it’s boring – I would still be in Barcelona, my home.
“But every country has its own personality, its own way to play. And that is marvellous.
“That’s why football is amazing. And, of course, I come here and I have said a million times that I am trying to adapt to English football.
“But it’s 11 against 11 and the pitches here are smaller – or look like it, more than the other places.
“And the intensity and the aggressiveness makes it a bit more difficult. So, I understand that. I have never complained and I never complained in the past. It’s just we can do better to improve.”
And Guardiola also admits that he has made mistakes this season, adding that, when things don’t go well, his ideas are to blame, not his players.
City looked like they might run away with the Premier League title when they won their first six fixtures and first 10 games in all competitions. But since that run ended, almost every step forward has been followed by a step back. The pressure clearly got to Guardiola when he gave some tetchy interviews after the Burnley game last Monday, despite the fact his side had won the game.
They followed that victory up with a 5-0 thumping of West Ham in the FA Cup on Friday.
Guardiola said: “Consistency is the only way.
“We gave, in the first part of the season, some really, really good games and performances.
“But the moment we made mistakes, especially in defence – an own-goal at White Hart Lane, our miss at Celtic in Glasgow – we lost a little of our confidence to play.
“And at times my ideas were not good. That’s because I’m still getting to know the players, to know what is the best position for them, the best way to play and to adapt to them.
“At the beginning of the season, we controlled the game through the passes. That’s what we did against West Ham and what we have to try to do.
“That is what I think we have to try to do, through the passes, through the multi, multi, multi- passes, the situation comes along.
“When that happens, you concede fewer goals. But when the ball is up and down, any team in the Premier League is better than us – much, much better.
“Sometimes I have an idea: three at the back or to play a player in a certain way, and sometimes it didn’t work.
“And, when that happens, I never complain to the players. “Because I see them training, how they suffer, and what they did in the last game against Burnley after 65, 70 minutes with 10 against 11, two days after Anfield.
“You have to look at yourself and see what you have to do to help them find each other and play to each other more fluently, not all the time with an aggressiveness.
“That is my job. I have to help them and I tell them that.
“And most of the times we were not good, it was my responsibility.”