‘DIFFERENT YEAR ...SAME STUFF’
PEP’S TINKERING IS COSTLY AGAIN
What now for Guardiola and Manchester City after another Euro failure?
IF THE definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result then Pep Guardiola is stark raving bonkers.
Once again the Manchester City manager could not resist the urge to strive for perfection – and once again he was left sifting through the wreckage of another Champions League car crash.
City’s players were said to be stunned when Guardiola told them just three days before Saturday night’s quarter-final against Lyon that he was changing a formation he had spent four years fine-tuning.
His three-man defence would include Eric Garcia, the 19-year-old who has just told the club he will not be signing a new contract because he fancies going back to Barcelona.
Alongside him, while John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi were wearing fluorescent substitute bibs, was 35-year-old midfielder Fernandinho.
Joao Cancelo, a right-back, would play as a wing-back. On the left.
And what about Kevin De Bruyne, arguably the world’s best creative midfielder? Well he would be employed as an auxiliary centreforward, obviously.
It took Guardiola 55 minutes to realise his folly, with Lyon leading through Maxwel Cornet’s strike.
A devastated De Bruyne summed it up perfectly when he said: “Different year, same stuff.” Monaco,
Liverpool, Tottenham and Lyon should be the words carved into Guardiola’s Etihad headstone.
But the reality is that the Catalan is the only manager in the world who does not live with the threat of the sack looming over him.
Guardiola is the king of all he surveys at the £200million campus built for his arrival.
There are just 10 months left on Guardiola’s contract and he will be the one who decides when to leave Manchester.
Just as he was when he walked away from Barcelona and Bayern Munich. That is not a healthy situation for any club. Especially one that finished the Premier League 18 points behind the champions.
David Silva is gone. With Sergio Aguero as their main striker, the team is always one injury away from a crisis. The mileage on Fernandinho’s clock is taking its toll.
The message to Stones, Otamendi and Benjamin Mendy was made crystal clear in the Estadio Jose Alvalade when the team sheet was handed in. City need a rebuild – and they have a manager who had already spent £675million in the transfer market even before he was allowed to use the money received from Bayern Munich for Leroy Sane to bring in Nathan Ake and Ferran Torres for next season.
City’s owners are not short of a few quid. But even Sheikh Mansour must have winced to see Rodri and Ilkay Gundogan being made to look like they were wearing hobnail boots by Lyon’s mobile midfielders. Especially with Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden sitting on the bench.
Even when De Bruyne brought City level with a 69th-minute equaliser and Lyon were dead on their feet, all their old flaky habits were not far from the surface.
The first of Moussa Dembele’s two late goals should have been disallowed for a foul on Aymeric Laporte.
But even Guardiola knew that criticising VAR would only paper over the cracks that were exposed further by Raheem Sterling shooting over an open goal and Ederson dropping the ball at the feet of Dembele to kill the game.
So City’s best result in Europe in the 10 years since they started qualifying for the Champions League remains their successful appeal to CAS.