Without the Champions League, Pep’s time at City must be seen as a failure
WHEN the dust settles on his time at Manchester City, we may well look back on something Pep Guardiola said in August as hugely significant.
Guardiola’s contract runs out in 2023 and, last month, he said that he will definitely be leaving City then.
This is something a manager should never do.
Remember what happened when Alex Ferguson announced, in the summer of 2001, that he would retire at the end of that season?
The players definitely didn’t respond to him the same way. United would end that season without a trophy.
Ferguson did a U-turn midway through the campaign, declaring that he was staying, but it was too late. The damage was done.
He later described his initial retirement announcement as the biggest mistake of his career.
Once a manager makes it clear that he’s eyeing the exit door, he just doesn’t have the same power.
We saw that with Ferguson’s aborted retirement. I think we’re seeing something similar now with Guardiola and City.
To me, what is most striking is the attitude and demeanour of Kevin De Bruyne.
Crankiness
He is City’s main man but he just doesn’t look as motivated now.
There is a crankiness to him that wasn’t there before. He’s moaning at his teammates far too much.
Another sign that things aren’trightatCitywas Guardiola’s spat with fans’ group representatives.
He was annoyed at the ground not being full for every game — but having a go at the fans shows how out of touch Guardiola is with the place where he works.
City aren’t like Manchester United or Liverpool. Both of those clubs have thousands of day-trippers from everywhere from Ireland to Scandinavia to Japan turning up to cheer them on.
City’s fanbase, in contrast, is very much a localised one.
It’s a club — despite the wealth that has come in — that is rooted in workingclass Manchester.
It costs a huge amount of money for fans to follow their team. That is especially the case when you play as many European games as City do.
In the 1998/99 season, Guardiola won his sixth and final LaLiga title as a player with Barcelona.
That same season, City were in the Third Division in England — but their average attendance was still nearly 30,000.
That’s the level of loyal support City have — long before billionaire owners and Guardiola.
Tomorrow, Guardiola is facing one of his biggest games of the season — an away trip to serious title contenders, Chelsea.
I think he’s in for a rude awakening. To me, City have fallen behind both Chelsea and Liverpool.
They play both in the space of eight days — with an away trip to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League sandwiched between them.
Those games will show us where City are, and I think they’ll be found wanting.
They cruised to the title last season, but that strange Covid-damaged campaign gave a false impression of City’s worth.
More than any other team, they benefited from no fans being allowed to attend games.
That’s because Guardiola’s style of football isn’t based on energy or power surges or emotion.
Sterile
There is a soullessness at the heart of tiki-taka.
It is a sterile way of playing football, a way that appeals to the brain — not the heart. People have rumbled that fact. It doesn’t thrill them in the way that watching Liverpool can be so thrilling.
The aura around Guardiola has faded, too.
Look at Southampton’s performance against City last weekend. They got a draw with comfort and could really have won the game.
For all the staggering amount of money they’ve spent, it is astonishing that City don’t have an out-andout goalscorer.
It was clear for a lon that Sergio Aguero was ravaged and near the e
Hapless
Why was a plan not place to replace him? W ‘plan’ the hapless pur Harry Kane?
Does Guardiola think are no other strikers world?
However, Liverpool Chelsea both have 20-g year men in Mohamed