Pep is preaching team ethic in bid to win silverware
IF the message wasn’t clear from the first City team selection of the season, Pep Guardiola spelled it out after victory over Brighton.
The manager knows all too well the pressure and expectations focussed on the Etihad after a disappointing first campaign.
A serial winner before arriving in Manchester, the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach is more determined than ever to have a seriously impressive year.
That is why, having convinced the board to significantly upgrade his options, Guardiola has turned to the shrewdest brain he knows to find the right balance: his own.
Thanks to their summer spending, the question is no longer whether City have the players to beat a team but what combination of their arsenal of attackers is needed to unlock each particular defence.
So it was that the ‘more dynamic’ Raheem Sterling, Bernardo Silva and Leroy Sane were left on the bench at the Amex for the Premier League opener.
Leaving Sterling in particular out of the starting XI was a particular wrench for the coach but there can be no room for sympathy.
“In the line-up, he deserved to play,” he said.
“Always when someone deserves to play, when someone special plays good, I would like to be generous with the guys who train well.
“But he knows it’s the first game, there’s a lot of games and he knows he has the qualities to help us a lot with the quality that he has to help us in those small spaces, in one-against-one, against central defenders, to create chances for other players and that will be so important.”
Team was the buzzword after beating Brighton.
Most questions about individuals were turned into remarks about the collective; the defence helped the attack, the attack helped the defence and the midfield options are “phwoar!”
It is by hammering home that message that Guardiola hopes to bind his players together into a cohesive and cooperative squad.
As well as the demands the players are expected to meet on the pitch, they are also being asked for patience and acceptance of his decisions.
If he is to be responsible for some extremely talented players sitting on the bench every week, the coach needs their understanding that they are still important to him and loyalty to be able to turn it on whenever required.
Ultimately though, Guardiola has opted to go back to basics and trust his instincts above anything else in his bid for silverware.
The manager may have stopped short in pre-season of describing this group as a team in his image, but if he gets his way then they will do by the time the trophies are decided.