Tim Charlesworth
Pep Guardiola is coming in for quite a bit of criticism at the moment. We know how upset our fans were to lose 2-1 away to Everton, having led 1-0. Imagine how City fans feel after losing the same fixture 4-0. A little bit of the magic has gone and the emperor’s new clothes are exposed. Pep is a winner and he has won the league in six of the last seven seasons that he has competed in (three at Barcelona, three at Bayern Munich), but it is beginning to look unlikely that he will win with City this season. The assumption that he would do so was perhaps always a little naive. At Barcelona he inherited a team with Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Busquets and others. At Munich he took over the defending European champions. The ageing Man City team which finished fourth last season was never going to be quite the same proposition.
I really enjoy the tiki-taka high pressing style of football that Pep has developed, whilst appreciating that others find it ponderous. Whatever you think of his football, I think he must be given credit for what he achieved at Barcelona (Munich was OK, but less impressive). He did start from a good place (Xavi and Messi is one hell of a hand to be dealt), but he also did wonderful things with that team. His Barcelona is the best club side I have seen, and their style was both bold and imaginative. If you are to develop a new way of playing football, you must be 100% committed to it, and he is. The flip-side of this commitment, is complete tactical inflexibility, so it seems a nonsense to me, for critics to complain that he is tactically inflexible. When he went to Bayern, he changed a Champions League winning team to play in his Barcelona tradition, so it’s hardly surprising that he is basically doing the same at City. If you want tactical flexibility, don't hire Pep!
What cannot really be denied is that Pep has changed football the world over. Of course, like all inventions, Pep’s unique brand of football is not quite as innovative as it first appears. It arises quite naturally from the Cruyff/La Masia/total-football/tiki-taka tradition of Barcelona. Guardiola, who had studied at the La Masia academy, was the star of the Barcelona ‘dream-team’ managed by Johan Cruyff from 1988 to 1996 (and worshipped by a small local boy called Cesc Fabregas). Guardiola said himself that: ‘He [Cruyff] painted the chapel and Barcelona coaches since have merely restored or improved it’.
I think Wenger was very much influenced by Pep when Barcelona were at their best, and we saw a version of tiki-taka at Arsenal that sometimes led to us being mocked as 'Barca-light'. In recent years, I think Wenger has been less convinced by the tiki-taka short fast passing model, but he is also a principled/tactically inflexible coach (not quite as much as Pep, but close), and we know that this can frustrate fans.
Interestingly, the high press element of Guardiola’s innovation has been more widely adopted in England than the tiki-taka passing element. I have particularly enjoyed the 'ambush high pressing’ which Arsenal have employed this season. This works much better with Sanchez at centre forward than Giroud, so we have been missing it a bit in the last few games. A consequence of the widespread use of the high press is to demand more technical quality from centre halves, and I think Koscielny and Mustafi are well equipped for this new style of football (as is Holding). Gabriel is less technically secure and this was exposed in our recent defeats against Everton and City.
There is no doubt that Man City is Guardiola’s toughest test yet. He has proved many things, but he has not proved his ability to rebuild an ageing team. That is what he must now do, and it is not that surprising that he is struggling. The game has also changed, partly as a result of his influence and ideas; opposition teams are less shocked by the high press when it comes, and less liable to crumble in the face of it. They are also more comfortable finding ways to score when they have little possession - Everton and Leicester have both brutally exposed City on this front this season.
In the next couple of years, we will see whether Pep can meet this challenge or not, presuming of course that the City community has the patience to let him try. He has to prove, not only that he can adapt City to his method of football, but that his method can survive the proverbial wet, cold, dark evening in North West England, which is where Wenger’s version of tiki-taka tended to fall down. There is a sense in which he is trying to succeed where Wenger has failed. Perhaps he is the better manager and can make it work, perhaps he is deeply more committed to the creed than Wenger was? Maybe it just can’t be done in England?
If he doesn’t succeed, I suspect that City might be his last job in football. Pep is 46 today (18th January) and his mentor, the late Johan Cruyff retired from football management in 1996 at the age of 49. He has said that he won’t go on forever, and if the City experiment fails, I wonder if he will have the stomach or mental fight to take on the next mountain. However successful he is, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which anything other than that great Barca team is his enduring legacy. He must know this, and at some point, that may sap his resolve. If he could run out of will to manage his beloved Barcelona, where he lived and worked as man and boy and learnt everything he knows, how much more easily could he walk away from the rain of Manchester?
Pep has a palpable intensity that oozes out from him. Like Wenger, he takes defeat badly, but he bears his pain even worse than Wenger, and I’m not sure he’s enjoying the opportunity to get more practice at handling it. If he does fail, and City is his last job, I will be a little bit sad at the demise of one of football’s great modern men (but not too sad, especially if his failure allows Arsenal to win). Whatever happens next Pep, I think you have enriched football and you have certainly left a lasting influence on it. I would like to wish you a very happy birthday.
Twitter@TimC1972
Tim is the author of “It’s Happened Again” available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Read a sample chapter at www.itshappenedagain.com
