Penalty practice is pointless, says Guardiola
Manager is also a diehard fan of the club, raised watching the great sides of the Seventies and Eighties
Pep Guardiola has revealed that Manchester City have not been practising penalties ahead of today’s Carabao Cup final against Aston Villa, despite their recent woes from the spot.
City had missed four successive penalties in the Premier League before Kevin De Bruyne’s spot kick secured a 2-1 victory over Real Madrid in the Champions League on Wednesday.
Two of City’s past three League Cup finals have been decided by penalty shoot-outs, against Chelsea last season and Liverpool in 2016.
Despite his reputation for meticulous planning, Guardiola insists City’s recent failures from 12 yards have not convinced him of the need to practise penalties before their Wembley showdown against Villa.
Guardiola, who has guided City to victory in six of the past seven domestic trophies on offer, said: “Our statistics in this final are really good. The problem is that lately we haven’t been perfect.
“The guys who want to take penalties practise quite often, but I am not a big fan to do it [practise]. I believe a lot that it’s all about how you feel before you take a penalty. You are at Wembley, under pressure, so it is in your head. If you say, ‘OK, I am going to score’ – that is the way. When you have doubts, you miss.
“The only thing that matters is that the player thinks they will score – because normally they will.”
Meanwhile Dean Smith, the Villa manager, is poised to give Orjan Nyland a starting place at Wembley, seven weeks after the goalkeeper conceded six goals in a Premier League match against Manchester City. Nyland was Aston Villa’s hero in the semi-final against Leicester City and is set to start at Wembley ahead of January loan signing Pepe Reina as a reward for his performances in the competition.
Aston Villa and cup finals have always been memorable, happy moments spent with his family for Dean Smith, so it will be a poignant afternoon when he walks out at Wembley today. Smith can still recall with pin-sharp clarity when his father Ron took him and his brother, Dave, to Wembley for the 1977 League Cup final, when Villa faced Everton, eventually winning in a second replay, and the claret-and-blue love affair started.
The glory days of the early 1980s followed, with Villa winning the league and European Cup, with Dean and Dave standing on the Holte End as their father worked as a match day steward on the Trinity Road stand.
Today’s Carabao Cup final will be Smith’s second visit to Wembley as Villa head coach in under 12 months and, inevitably, thoughts of his father will not be far away. Ron has now been in a home for more than four years, suffering from dementia. “He has no idea I’m Villa manager. Dementia is a tough illness and he is suffering,” says Smith. “[Last season] I’d gone to see him just before the Championship play-off final. He was awake and I just saw a little glint in his eye. Unfortunately, over the past couple of months I’ve not seen him too often with his eyes open. I will do it for myself first and foremost but you do it for all your families, that is what these things are about.”
Smith’s brother will be at Wembley, however, and it has been a peculiar experience since Dean was appointed in October 2018. Dave was sitting with the fans last weekend at St Mary’s when Villa lost to the Saints in arguably their worst performance of the season. Dean says: “It’s really funny because of the position I’m in now. At Southampton it would have hurt him as a Villa fan and probably because of what I was going through as well.
“We were playing Sheffield United last season and we were three down with eight minutes to go. We ended up drawing 3-3. Dave came into my room afterwards for a drink and said: ‘What about all those fans who left early?’ I replied: ‘Yeah, and you’d have been one of them too if I wasn’t the manager, wouldn’t you?’ I just hope he wasn’t one of them booing me when we were three down…”
Smith’s affinity with Villa runs deep. He grew up four miles from Villa Park on the Gorse Farm estate in Great Barr and admits he would be at Wembley as a supporter if he was not leading out the team against Pep Guardiola’s side. He remains a popular figure with supporters after restoring a sense of pride and identity, despite fears over relegation this season. After all, he is “one of their own”.
Smith was at Wembley as a fan in 1994 to see Ron Atkinson upset the odds with victory over Manchester United, denying Sir Alex Ferguson a treble, and it remains a frustration that he missed the final two years later. That game against Leeds under Brian Little in 1996 was the last time Villa won silverware, and Smith was an angry absentee.
“I was at Hereford United as a player in ’96, we’d played Colchester away and [manager] Graham Turner got us all in the next day because we hadn’t played well. I was gutted because I’d got tickets.”
There have been other frustrations, too.
“I went to Wembley for the Carling Cup final in 2010 [against Manchester United] when Martin O’Neill was in charge. How [Nemanja] Vidic didn’t get sent off [for a foul on Gabby Agbonlahor], I don’t know.
“I was with Martin not so long ago and he’s still talking about it. I’m still chewing about it – and so’s he.”
That painful wait of 24 years without a trophy weighs heavily on Smith, whose team will face Manchester City as huge underdogs after losing both their Premier League games against them this season. In January they were humiliated 6-1 in front of their own supporters, with Sergio Aguero scoring a hat-trick.
Yet Villa’s route to the final has been impressive, with victories over Leicester and Wolves, plus that strange night at Villa Park in December when they romped to a 5-0 win over a Liverpool team with an average age of 19. “We have a great history in this competition,” Smith says. “We could have sold out twice or three times over for this final.
“In a 15-year career you’ve got 45 opportunities to win something, excluding European competitions – the League Cup, FA Cup, promotion or a title. It’s not many chances to win something.
“For me, growing up, it was just about winning. Getting those titles, trophies, medals – and it was the same for John Terry [assistant coach]. “There’s a lot about now just surviving in the Premier League rather than winning trophies, but I’ve never lost that desire to win things.”