“I think it’s not a good message for society, for our kids, for our teenagers, showing them that just the winner is perfect,” Pep Guardiola said back in November after his side had responded to defeat at Liverpool by beating Chelsea 2-1. “We are creating a depressed people, loser people. It is not. Important is the effort, the commitment, the situation. In football I know we want to win but just win once and the other is disaster? It's not, it doesn't work in that way.”
That it’s a slightly strange thing to hear from a football manager and particularly one as obviously driven as Guardiola doesn’t alter its fundamental truth. Only one side can win the league in any given season but that doesn’t make the other 19 failures, and particularly not the team that finishes second. Liverpool’s freakish excellence shouldn’t be used as a stick to beat others with.
It’s obviously not insignificant that the gap is now 22 points, but equally there comes a point at which a huge gap is just a huge gap. City’s league form has drifted of late, but given they almost certainly won’t win the league and almost certainly will qualify for the Champions league, that is perhaps only to be expected. Their season now consists of the League Cup final, the FA Cup and, most importantly, the Champions League.
None of which is to deny that there has been a downturn this season; there clearly has been. The point rather is that City’s form cannot be judged without reference to Liverpool. City have already dropped 24 points this season, as opposed to 16 in the whole of last and 14 in the whole of the one before, but they probably wouldn’t have dropped so many had the pressure applied by Liverpool and the subsequent sense of futility not been so great.
| Manchester City are set for a huge summer rebuild after Pep Guardiola warned City stars they face judgement day.
Futures of at least Seven of Pep’s squad is under threat in last 4 months of the campaign.
[Star Sport] pic.twitter.com/EEbvQSLK10
— City Chief (@City_Chief) February 1, 2020
The question then, in the long term, is how great the actual downturn has been, and how easy it will be to rectify. Slightly surprisingly, City actually lead the xG table (or at least the version put together by Understat) by five points from Liverpool, which suggests there isn’t too much wrong with the fundamentals.
Sunday’s defeat at Tottenham was typical of recent problems. City were by far the better side, but a combination of misfortune and atrocious finishing undid them. Again and again, they got into the position to score the classic City goal, cutting the ball back from the goal-line towards the top of the six yard box and repeatedly the pass went behind the player coming in. Whether that is caused by a lack of confidence or focus is difficult to say, but the wider point is that repeatedly City missed the final pass by a yard or two; it’s small margins.
The injury to Leroy Sane – who may have been sold anyway – and Raheem Sterling’s loss of form – and he is a player whose decision-making fluctuates wildly with his confidence – are perhaps the most obvious reasons, although David Silva seems not quite as precise as he once was, while Bernardo Silva has not hit the heights this season that he did last.
The biggest issue of personnel, though, fairly clearly, is at the back. Failing to replace Vincent Kompany seemed a risk at the time, but the injury to Aymeric Laporte has made it into a major error, particularly given Guardiola’s apparent lack of faith in either John Stones or Nicolas Otamendi. Pushing Fernandinho back as cover has meant Rodri being exposed more regularly than was perhaps intended at this stage. And City haven’t really had a reliable left-back since the departures of Gael Clichy and Aleksandr Kolarov in 2017.
And then there’s Guardiola. Even in the summer there were whispers from City that he seemed more intense than ever, and that can wear players down. His fourth season at Barcelona and his third and Bayern both ended with his relationship with the club fraying. City perhaps are feeling the well-attested effects of familiarity that so often begin to undermine managers after three or four seasons at a club.
But still, the idea that Guardiola is some sort of fraud, however much his many online detractors may have asserted it over the past decade, is palpable nonsense. Then again, there is a sense that his style of football has been superceded by the rapid transitions of Jurgen Klopp. It is possible that his peak has passed. Yet while City this season are not quite what they have been over the past two campaigns, but they aren’t far off. All teams ebb and flow and it’s just as possible that a decent centre-back would fix most issues.
