PEP’S MISSION TO CUT OUT CITY’S CLANGERS
IT STILL feels strange that the Premier League’s top scorers, and a team boasting the Golden Glove winner, finished so haplessly short of champions Liverpool two months ago.
Manchester City bludgeoned 102 goals. They kept 16 clean sheets. Their goal difference was 15 superior to Liverpool’s. Yet their title hopes were long gone by the time they capitulated at tonight’s opponents, Wolves, just before the new year.
City are a Jekyll and Hyde team and nobody is more aware of that than Pep Guardiola. The individual mistakes that plagued them last season — and, in truth, have riddled each of his four campaigns — are largely inexplicable.
Take that night at Wolves. City were down to 10 men but took a 2-0 lead playing scintillating football on the break, before surrendering and departing with nothing, ruing the absentmindedness of Benjamin Mendy and Nicolas Otamendi.
The latter’s fingerprints were on the majority of disasters — most notably the traumatic defeat at Norwich in September — and City are trying to move him on.
It is hard to see how those errors, the sort which laced last month’s Champions League calamity against Lyon, can be eradicated in such a short space of time. Their looming threat is partly why Guardiola alters his formations, or solidifies midfield, in decisions that can mystify supporters and, occasionally, the players themselves.
The fear of implosion festers, eroding trust in City’s attacking instincts. They boasted more than 65 per cent possession in all but three of the 12 games in which points were dropped last season, but failed to create opportunities in plenty of them.
When they did, the chances were spurned. Guardiola pinpointed Raheem Sterling as the best player on the pitch against Lyon, but he missed an open goal that turned the tie. Aymeric Laporte, perhaps the best leftsided central defender in the world, made two errors as City lost 3-1. Unexplainables.
‘We have to play our football and avoid these kind of situations, these mistakes, that is what we are trying to do,’ Guardiola said during a joyless first press conference which did not exactly transmit confidence before their first match of the season.
Maybe there was an element of theatrics, given the talk around City is that the first full week of training has been positive.
Nobody is quite sure how this season will go for City. Guardiola is in his fifth term, with questions swirling around his future and nine months left on his contract. The Catalan quashed suggestions he had agreed an extension and the truth is that no one — not even sporting director Txiki Begiristain — knows what will happen. Guardiola is likely to leave a decision until midway through the campaign.
The plan two years ago, immediately after amassing 100 points, was to guard against complacency. It worked. Last year the plan was to move away from intense individual coaching and focus more on enjoyment. That didn’t work. This time, Guardiola felt the squad needed new faces to bring energy. Ferran Torres, the exciting winger, is already proving a lively character. Claudio Bravo, David Silva and Leroy Sane have gone; more will follow if there are willing buyers.
Guardiola hopes a new centre-half will arrive before the end of this week. He wanted four signings but may end up with only three after the Lionel Messi episode.
Regardless, a partner for Laporte has always been the top priority. Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly or Jules Kounde at Sevilla appear the most likely, and it seems Begiristain is now ready to do that deal after waiting and haggling.
City have oodles of cash but are reluctant to spend the mega-money required. That must change — if not now, certainly when they sign a striker to replace Sergio Aguero.
‘I would not be here if I didn’t feel the fire or the desire,’ Guardiola said. ‘I still want to help the players avoid making mistakes and I still have passion to do it — maybe more than ever.’