Pep’s in pieces as his City jigsaw falls apart

GRIM FOR GUARDIOLA — See Pages 70-71

AS Everton reflected yesterday on their 4-0 dismantling of Manchester City, one wonders what the club’s head of performance analysis Laurence Stewart made of it.

Stewart used to work in a similar role at City before Pep Guardiola took over but departed for a promotion at Everton fearing, rightly or wrongly, that he would be marginalised.

Stewart is relevant to the story of City under Guardiola because he is part, albeit a very small one, of the bigger picture of what has happened at the club since the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach took over in the summer.

City’s football operation has been moulded and recast to suit Guardiola. A number of staff have left while others, those familiar to the Spaniard, have been recruited in their place.

There have been organisational changes, too.

It is not exactly the way City said things would be done in the wake of Roberto Mancini’s turbulent final months as manager in 2013. Back then, they said the club would operate a continental model, whereby a ‘first-team coach’ would be slotted relatively seamlessly in and out of an existing structure.

For Guardiola, City tinkered with their own prototype and it is easy to see why. The 45-year-old is a special coach with a special record. So they took special measures for a special man. This, though, is why it now has to work. City have invested far too much in Guardiola for him to fail.

Certainly at Goodison on Sunday Guardiola’s City looked a very long way from the standards he would expect.

There was a slight sense of freakishness about the result — Everton had four shots on target and scored with all of them — but the defeat was City’s fourth in their last eight league fixtures and enough to prompt Guardiola to rule his team out of the title race.

At times recently, Guardiola has sounded downcast. He has rowed back from his ‘woe is me’ display in front of the cameras after victory over Burnley on January 2 but still looked shell-shocked as he watched events unfold at Everton.

On the field there are problems. Claudio Bravo, signed from Barcelona by Guardiola to replace Joe Hart, furthered his reputation as a goalkeeper who does not make many saves, and central defender John Stones was unconvincing enough to provoke much heated debate among TV pundits after the game.

Neither player is to blame for the wider issues, however, and if Stones in particular is beginning to feel scapegoated, then it is hard to blame him.

More importantly, Guardiola’s struggles to adjust to the whirlwind nature of his new environment are clear, and the club’s recruitment in recent years, led by football director Txiki Begiristain, has left the City manager with a group of defenders who are not collectively good enough to take the club where it wants to go.

Behind the scenes, Guardiola has been accommodated generously. For all his charm, he can be inflexible and unapproachable, and City have been pragmatic when he has strayed into areas that should not concern him.

Assembling his own backroom staff is one thing, as is deciding that the players need not sleep at the club’s expensive training centre the night before matches. His predecessor Manuel Pellegrini always thought this was a club preference, but Guardiola has not worried about that.

Guardiola’s influence stretches beyond those matters that directly impact on team performance, however. For example, City’s players used to travel on match days in suits provided by TM Lewin and this season another outfitter, Ben Sherman, were fancied to sign a deal with the club.

However, City’s players now wear clothes by DSquared2, the label favoured by Guardiola since his days at Barcelona. Upon his arrival at Bayern Munich in 2013, players at the Bundesliga club also started to wear clothes from the DSquared2 line and Guardiola is mentioned glowingly on the company’s Facebook page.

So Guardiola’s players at least look like he wishes them to, even if they are not yet playing like he needs them to. And behind the scenes at the Etihad Stadium, staff feel protective of their coach. They have been irked by the way he has been constantly examined in the media. Some feel that other managers do not get the same treatment. But this only points to the profile of the manager City have appointed. Guardiola arrived in the Premier League as a serial winner and his team began the season playing beautifully and putting together 10 consecutive wins.

When you spend your life setting high standards, it is only natural that you are judged by them.

The City hierarchy retain their belief in Guardiola, even if they did not expect his team to be sitting outside the Champions League places in mid-January.

That belief is shared by the manager’s long-term allies, Begiristain and chief executive Ferran Soriano, as well as at the Abu Dhabi arm of the club’s structure.

Ever since Begiristain and Soriano arrived from Barcelona in 2012, everything at City has been leading up to the appointment of the man they know so very well. Guardiola was the last piece in the jigsaw, the silver bullet.

So, we should not be surprised that Guardiola has been allowed to shape City in his own image. What does surprise us is that it is not yet working for him.