City will pay Pep £300k a week
PEP GUARDIOLA has been confirmed as Manchester City’s next manager — and he will be given a war chest to compete for £80million powerhouse Paul Pogba and £50m Everton defender John Stones. Guardiola has agreed a three-year deal worth a record £300,000 a week, £40,000 more than
MANCHESTER CiTy have stopped the world once before on transfer deadline day. September 1, 2008 saw them announce a takeover by Abu Dhabi United Group and the subsequent £33million purchase of Robinho f rom Real Madrid.
Since that remarkable day sevenand- a- half years ago City have trodden a circuitous path towards growth and glory. For a while now, however, it has been a path leading inexorably towards this, the final stop in their development.
Pep Guardiola, a coach who has lost only 19 of 239 league games at Barcelona and Bayern Munich. His name has been associated with City even longer than it has been with his current club in Germany.
As City made clear yesterday, conversations with Guardiola have been taking place since he first said no to them in 2012,012, a year before he joined Bayern. rn. At some point, City chiefef executive Ferran Sorianoo and football director Txiki Begiristain, both of whom worked with Guardiola at Barcelona, knew their friend would say yes.
As such, City is a club now ready for the former Barcelona coach, a man they ey always knew was coming. itt is this, more than anything, that makes yesterday a landmark day for the Premier League and other sides who have aspirations of winning it.
Much in sport is about timing and football is no different. Put the best coach into the wrong club, or into the right club at the wrong time, and the risks multiply.
in appointing Guardiola now, it feels as though City have, by luck or by judgment, got their timing right. it does not feel like a gamble.
The modern City are free from the shadow of a financial fair play infringement, bolstered by fresh investment from China and established, finally, as a Champions League last-16 club.
Their football operation is run by men Guardiola knows, the first-team pool is deep, their resources deeper and the youth system established in such a way that it must deliver soon. in football terms, therefore, Guardiola will be walking down a red carpet when he arrives in June.
yesterday, fittingly, it was City’s current manager Manuel Pellegrini who burst the dam, who turned informed speculation into fact. it was his decision to end a routine pre-match press conference with news of his impending departure. Within moments, City officials completed the circle with confirmation of his replacement.
Pellegrini was the club’s second choice when he was hired in 2013. The chances are that he knew it even then. The Chilean has been keeping a seat warm for his former La Liga rival and tot his credit the former ReaReal Madrid boss has deliverered some significant tropphies. Nevertheless, Guarddiola will find a squad waiting for his measured touch this summer.
Under Pellegrini and his predecessor Roberto Mancini City have won twtwo Premier League titles, a LLeague Cup and an FA Cup in four-and-a-half years. Pellegrini’sPellegr team remain in the hunt for four trophies this season.
That represents progress for a club who won nothing between 1976 and 2011, but City did not move forward as they would have liked under either coach. Mancini won the League in 2012 and watched his team stall on the back of poor discipline. Pellegrini has witnessed similar regression, albeit for different reasons.
City may triumph in a poor Premier League this season but if they do it will be because nobody else seems to want to win it. Their points tally of 44 is their lowest in several seasons at this stage and too often their play has been torpid.
Guardiola’s task will be clear. He must make his City team equal the sum of their illustrious parts once again. if he does, the rest of the Premier League may well play for second place. This squad is not as good as the one Guardiola inherited at Barcelona in 2008 — Valdes, Puyol, Abidal, Xavi, Toure, iniesta, Messi, Eto’o — nor the one containing Neuer, Lahm, Ribery, Robben, Muller and Schweinsteiger he was introduced to at Bayern.
Guardiola’s brother Pere has attended many City matches in recent months and the new coach himself was in the stand at the Nou Camp last spring as Pellegrini’s team failed so dismally when faced with the very best in Europe.
City’s recruitment still needs to be better. Guardiola will not need to have told Soriano and Begiristain this. Equally, the club’s coaching and man-management need a severe jolt and this is where Guardiola will earn his £300,000-a-week salary.
Great coaches make good players very good and the very best players almost unbeatable.
yaya Toure may not have enjoyed his final year under Guardiola before leaving Barcelona for City in 2010 but he certainly enjoyed the two years before. Asked once by Sportsmail how he managed to step into an unfamiliar central defensive position for the 2009 Champions League f i nal against Manchester United in Rome, Toure said: ‘it wasn’t difficult. When Pep tells you that you can do something, you believe already that you can do it. So i did it.’
That, in a nutshell, is Guardiola’s genius. He will be expected to advance players, extend players and change players. if he does, then his second spell at City should be a little more progressive than his first.
in 2005, Guardiola had a trial at City at the age of 34, as a waning midfielder looking for high-profile work. City manager Stuart Pearce chose not to offer him a long-term contract and, on reflection, his judgment was probably sound.
More than a decade on, Guardiola is back on his own terms. it looks like City have got their decision absolutely right once again.