Guardiola needs second ‘water carrier’ to stop leak of points
MANY words of rare intelligence and perception on football have been delivered through the years by Pep Guardiola. The following spring to mind this weekend.
“Most of the things we have achieved are thanks to this guy,” said the manager of Manchester City.
“He is fast, he is intelligent, strong in the air and he can play in several positions. No sooner does he see a space than he runs there immediately. If you need someone to make a correction or a challenge, he sees it too.
“He can do absolutely anything and is an incredible player.
“If a team had three Fernandinhos they would be champions. We only have one and he is very important to us.”
A slump in form of a fabulous football team is never due to one single cause but it is absolutely no coincidence that Manchester City’s surprise defeats to Crystal Palace and Leicester in the past week came when Fernandinho was absent with injury.
He is the glue which holds the spectacular talents together. He tidies up the mistakes. He sweeps away the mess. He sees the whole picture and creates the frame for the masterpiece.
When the mighty Pep talks about his players, the greatest praise is for ever reserved for the
33-year-old Brazilian defensive midfielder rather than the sublime skills of Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva or Raheem Sterling.
Guardiola knows what is too often ignored in football – that this is the most crucial role in a team.
Some call it a holding midfielder or a pivot. On the continent they are often known as the ‘grey man’ or the ‘water carrier’. Whichever tag you prefer, they are the invisible giants of the old game.
Guardiola was that kind of footballer himself as a player, converted into the role as a youngster by his mentor Johan Cruyff and becoming the essential cog of the Barcelona dream team of the 1990s.
As a manager he has always valued them – Sergio Busquets at Barcelona and Xabi Alonso at Bayern Munich.
They were the first names on the team sheet, the players he didn’t want to rest or lose through injury. Their value is obvious elsewhere, if you care to look and understand.
For so long in recent years Arsenal were lacking this kind of midfielder. The impact of summer signing Lucas Torreira has been so considerable that many observers reckon he was the best pound-for-pound transfer acquisition by any club.
The title seasons of Leicester City and Chelsea were built on the clever resilience of N’Golo Kante. He became a rare water carrier voted as Player of the Season.
Gini Wijnaldum and Eric Dier are effective performers for Liverpool and Tottenham respectively, even though they never win the man-of-the-match awards they should.
Another telling example is the sustained excellence of Declan Rice, so admirable as the holding midfielder for West Ham at the age of 20 that England and Republic of Ireland are both eager for him to choose their national teams.
Given all this and given the words of Guardiola, it is impossible to believe the headlines which say that Manchester City won’t try to sign a back-up for Fernandinho in the winter transfer window which opens on Tuesday.
The bleak results of the last few days reveal there is no alternative solution in the current squad – moving John Stones up from defence didn’t work, nor did using Ilkay Gundogan.
It would be amazing, in what has become such a demanding and exhilarating Premier League title race, if the reigning champions did not address their glaring weakness.
Guardiola wanted to get Jorginho last summer but the Italian international went to Chelsea instead. He was linked also with Fred, who opted for Manchester United.
City’s need has intensified rather than diminished since then, just as Liverpool’s requirement for a top-class central defender was insistently compelling until they signed Virgil van Dijk.
The smart money is on a move by City for Tanguy Ndombele, a 22-yearold playing at Lyon who has just broken into the national team of world champions France managed by
Didier Deschamps, the man for whom the ‘water carrier’ tag was first coined.
All the big clubs in Europe are looking at Ndombele, and for an ambitious young footballer what better club manager to work for than Pep Guardiola?