HIGH FLYER
Why Pep has to pip all his worthy rivals to be the Manager of the Year
THERE are good arguments for giving the Manager of the Year award to Sean Dyche. The same arguments apply to David Wagner, Rafa Benitez, Chris Hughton, Roy Hodgson and Neil Warnock. They all did an amazing job by keeping their teams in the Premier League on limited resources and thriving against the odds. Or, in Warnock’s case, in getting Cardiff City promoted to the top flight on a shoestring budget.
The winner is announced on Tuesday and part of me would love Warnock to get it. I know him, I’ve worked with him and I’m biased, but to do what he has done in south Wales, to bring a club together when it was riven and drifting and win a record eighth promotion, a mark that sets him apart from all other managers, is quite an achievement.
Part of me would love Hodgson to win it, too. Nobody gave Crystal Palace a prayer of staying up when he took over. They did not win a single point from their first seven games. Nor did they score a single goal. Palace were the first club to be dead men walking by the end of September. And yet Hodgson saved them. A good man and a good coach, he revived his own reputation in the process. Again, it’s a hell of a story.
And part of me would l ove Hughton to win it, too. He has done a magnificent job at Brighton this season. Just like he does a magnificent job pretty much wherever he goes. Relentlessly unassuming and unfailingly modest, he never shouts about what he does, which often means nobody shouts for him, either. But it is time he is recognised as one of the best bosses in the country.
But if we were to make the award on the basis of fine husbandry of resources, then managers like John Coleman, who guided Accrington Stanley to the League Two title, where they finished five points clear of Luton Town in second despite working with one of the lowest budgets in the league, would be right at the top of the list for consideration, too.
The reason he isn’t is because he is working at a lower level than Hodgson, Benitez, Hughton and the rest. And the truth is that Hodgson, Benitez, Hughton and the rest are working at a lower level than the manager who surely has to win the award this season: Pep Guardiola.
The art of football management is a bit like driving a Formula One car in that respect. There are a lot of awfully talented drivers around and every one of them wants to get in the best car. By dint of his record at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, his reputation and the beautiful football his teams play, Guardiola has manoeuvred himself into the best car of the moment. Guardiola is where Hodgson, Benitez and Dyche would all love to be. Sure, he has a huge budget and wonderful players at Manchester City but he also has a different kind of responsibility and a different kind of pressure to managers lower down the table. His goal is to win and, specifically to win the Premier League title. In that goal, he has succeeded spectacularly.
His main rival for the Manager of the Year has to be Jurgen Klopp for the job he has done at Liverpool, guiding them against the odds to the Champions League final later this month and, if they secure a point against Brighton, consolidating a place in the top four.
Indeed, Liverpool’s late-season heroics in Europe have made some forget quite what a stunning campaign Guardiola has masterminded at City this season. What it has lacked in glory in Europe, it has made up for with a level of dominance and beautiful football domestically the like of which we have not witnessed for a long time.
City were champions in waiting for so long that as the last day of the season dawns, many appear to have grown a little blase about quite what Guardiola achieved. There was a lot of hyperbole around him when he arrived in Manchester two years ago. This season, he has justified every single bit of it.
This season has been about him and his City team. The league table does not lie and going into today’s last round of games it showed Guardiola’s City, who play their final match at Southampton, 19 points ahead of their nearest challengers, Manchester United. If City match United’s result today, they will finish the season with the biggest title-winning margin in Premier League history.
They have already broken the record for the most wins in a Premier League season and the most points accrued in a season. They have also scored more goals than any other team in the history of the Premier League. There are still a few die- hards trying to pretend that this has not been an extraordinary season for City but their voices are increasingly distant.
People laughed when some of us predicted that Guardiola would revolutionise English football but that is exactly what he has done. The level of dominance City have achieved goes some way to proving that but as well as rewriting the record books, he has recalibrated our ideas of what you have to do to win.
Guardiola is not about compromise or pragmatism. He is about staying faithful to the ideal of beautiful football. The team he has built at the Etihad is a passing, moving, pressing paean to that philosophy. Some of the football City have played this season has been breathtakingly brilliant. It has been fantasy football brought to life.
Guardiola has moulded a team where players such as Kevin de Bruyne, Raheem Sterling, David Silva and Leroy Sane can excel week after week after week. He built a platform that allows players of great flair to put their extravagant gifts on display. He has made City fans of everyone who loves to see football played with joy and expression.
In points, goals and aesthetics, Guardiola has raised the bar. City have scored 25 more goals than anyone else and conceded fewer than all their rivals. Their goal difference is exactly twice as good as United’s. Guardiola has blown the opposition to smithereens.
So, sure, there are several other managers who have done their jobs outstandingly this season and they deserve every bit of praise coming their way. But one man’s team are 19 points clear at the top of the table and it is his philosophy that has lit up English football these past nine months. Really, there’s only one choice for Manager of the Year: it has to be Guardiola.