Manchester City under Pep Guardiola | Pep on City v Liverpool ref: "He likes to be special"

serghei said:
But Pep's teams usually force the opposition to give away the ball in their own half. It is more about applying pressure and not letting the other team to build their attacks. I don't see that as tackling. Guardiola teams press as a unit and apply pressure on the ball carrier.

Actual tackling is going for the ball and hoping you get there first. Top players often punish you for that. I have seen City getting skinned by Barca with Kompany in charge because they tought they can tackle the Barca players as if they were Wigan. All that got them was red cards and penalties against, or nutmegs from Messi. It is better to keep your shape and don't take yourself out of the game by going for tackles that can very well fail. And if they fail in key zones you're done.
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You get nowhere in England without tackling due to its physical nature. In Spain you fall over as soon as you're touched but, in England, play goes on and you're out of the game. You lose that advantage if you're just positioning players for interceptions with an aging squad who aren't necessarily mobile.
No tackles made before the 35th min and 3-0 down. That says it all.
Herrera is running our midfield over the last 8/9 games and he's toping the charts in successful tackles.
 
TheReligion said:
He started from the bottom and worked his way to the top clubs.

Hardly JM's fault?
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He did excellent at Porto and earned the trust people have given him to spend big money IMO. I don't think many managers would have done better at some of the clubs he was at and spending big money. I was just explaining what I think the poster you quoted meant.
 
cyberman said:
You get nowhere in England without tackling due to its physical nature. In Spain you fall over as soon as you're touched but, in England, play goes on and you're out of the game. You lose that advantage if you're just positioning players for interceptions with an aging squad who aren't necessarily mobile.
No tackles made before the 35th min and 3-0 down. That says it all.
Herrera is running our midfield over the last 8/9 games and he's toping the charts in successful tackles.
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Come on! Spanish teams tackle, press and show aggressiveness, they don't just wait and intercept.
 
JPRouve said:
Come on! Spanish teams tackle, press and show aggressiveness, they don't just wait and intercept.
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They do tackle but they get away with much, much less so it's a bigger factor in English football when preparing for games.
 
Leicester were the game that broke van Gaal and cemented his cautious approach, the sample size before that game was too small to ever make any conclusions from those games but it is a fact that we went into full blown safety first mode after that 5-3 game. Will be curious to see how Pep will react but I think he is not very flexible and that game will more or less change nothing in terms of their approach.
 
cyberman said:
They do tackle but they get away with much, much less so it's a bigger factor in English football when preparing for games.
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English teams aren't better at tackling, tackling technique is not a bigger factor. The referees leniency/severity is a big factor but not the tackles in themselves, spanish teams tackle, tackle often and a lot of teams tackle with intensity the difference is that in Spain there are more free kicks and more cards.


Edit: And according to Whoscored there is more tackles per game in Spain than there is in England.
 
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Sarni said:
Leicester were the game that broke van Gaal and cemented his cautious approach, the sample size before that game was too small to ever make any conclusions from those games but it is a fact that we went into full blown safety first mode after that 5-3 game. Will be curious to see how Pep will react but I think he is not very flexible and that game will more or less change nothing in terms of their approach.
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Weren't Leicester like the 5th league game for van Gaal? Surely one game like that wouldn't break him. He was probably always going to be extremely dull despite that game
 
Attila said:
Weren't Leicester like the 5th league game for van Gaal? Surely one game like that wouldn't break him. He was probably always going to be extremely dull despite that game
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We did try attacking football against QPR the other week but QPR were garbage.
 
JPRouve said:
English teams aren't better at tackling, tackling technique is not a bigger factor. The referees leniency/severity is a big factor but not the tackles in themselves, spanish teams tackle, tackle often and a lot of teams tackle with intensity the difference is that in Spain there are more free kicks and more cards.
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In Spain Pep had his players surround the ref after every tackle to lessen the physicality of games. You simply don't do that in England. You couldn't look at a Barca player the wrong way without getting a yellow card.
In any case, English football is more direct so there are more 50/50 balls to be won, the technique isn't as good so there's a lot more opportunities to nick the ball.
Pep is going to have to vastly adjust his philosophy to succeed in England and it's not due to how English sides keep the ball.
 
Sarni said:
We did try attacking football against QPR the other week but QPR were garbage.
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Yeah but I still cant think one game would change his whole mind set. Let's say we won Leicester... I'm sure he would still find a way to play caution dull football in the weeks after.
 
cyberman said:
In Spain Pep had his players surround the ref after every tackle to lessen the physicality of games. You simply don't do that in England. You couldn't look at a Barca player the wrong way without getting a yellow card.
In any case, English football is more direct so there are more 50/50 balls to be won, the technique isn't as good so there's a lot more opportunities to nick the ball.
Pep is going to have to vastly adjust his philosophy to succeed in England and it's not due to how English sides keep the ball.
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Stats say the opposite to what you say, 3 spanish teams have more tackles per game than Middlesbrough who has the most tackles per game in England, Spanish teams also intercept more and concede more fouls.
 
All Spanish teams constantly argue with referees and engage in histrionics, it's just the fact that Barca were more often on receiving end of tackles due to style of play. But I guess some people believe in conspiracy theories or have their perspective twisted by hate.
 
Pep is just too stubborn in his tactics, but for the first time in his career, he does not have the squad brilliance to overcome the flaws of his system. You need super athletic and technically savvy defenders/goalie, plus a high ball retention rate in midfield/attack to make it work. At first I thought I was wrong about the severe lack of depth in defense and defensive midfield (after their super start), but now these flaws are exposed more and more. I don´t think this has anything do to with the style of play in or depth of the league, and all that EPL media driven BS. City is just not very good in goal, defense or defensive midfield and Pep won´t make any concessions, when it comes to his style of play and crazy experiments, when he probably should be a bit more pragmatic.
 

Good article imo. I get irritated when some suggest a version of football cannot work in this country or the ridicule we give foreign managers when they come here and try something new.
 
Adisa said:

Good article imo. I get irritated when some suggest a version of football cannot work in this country or the ridicule we give foreign managers when they come here and try something new.
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Read the article and cant see what's so good about it?

The criticism itself will neither surprise nor sting Pep Guardiola. He made that perfectly clear months ago, on the day he was presented as Manchester City manager.

“I know when it is not going well, you are not going to help us,” he told the assembled news media that day. Guardiola has spent his entire coaching career at clubs where crisis and defeat are synonyms. The pressure cookers of Barcelona and Bayern Munich soon remove any thin skin. “When we play badly, you have to say, ‘Oh, this team played badly,’” he said.

Over the last 15 games, Guardiola has heard that more than he would have liked. Manchester City has won just four times since the start of October. Against Leicester City on Saturday, Guardiola’s side allowed three goals inside 20 minutes. His team is now 7 points behind Chelsea, the Premier League’s ever-more-imposing leader. In recent weeks, Manchester City has played poorly more often than not.

Guardiola has not especially enjoyed hearing it, of course. His news conferences have become awkwardly staccato, most of his answers preceded by a brief, pointed glare at his inquisitor. He would have expected nothing less, however. “I know this is business,” he said back in July.

At times, however, it has not felt like business. In defeat, or even the absence of victory, Guardiola — more than any of his peers — is reproached not just for his professional decisions, his tactics and team selection, but for his personal flaws, too, as if the number of games City loses is directly proportional to the number of character failings its manager possesses.

After the defeat at Leicester, for example, Peter Schmeichel, the former Manchester United goalkeeper, declared that Guardiola’s refusal to adapt his tactics to try to combat the reigning Premier League champions marked him as a “very arrogant man.”

“That is a man saying: ‘I know best. My way of playing football is the best,’” Schmeichel added.

That is not the only accusation that has been leveled at Guardiola during City’s stutter over the last 10 weeks: Intransigence has been featured, as has a supposed tendency to overcomplicate matters, and a perfectionist’s restlessness. For his part, Guardiola admitted after leaving Bayern that he is “arrogant,” though not to the point that he thought he could change German soccer.

All of this illustrates just how acidic, how charged, the subject of Guardiola has become. This is not just another of those quibbles and squabbles that sustain the soap opera of the Premier League over the course of a long season; it runs deeper than that.

There are few subjects — perhaps José Mourinho apart — more contentious, more keenly felt than the issue of whether Guardiola deserves the lofty reputation that precedes him. That is because, at root, the debate is not actually about Guardiola at all. It is about English soccer’s sense of self.

Almost every week since Guardiola arrived, in those news media briefings he finds such a chore, one question has recurred. Now, he is almost waiting for it. He knows, at some point, he will be asked whether the Premier League is the strongest in the world.

His answer is not always the same. In the middle of October, he chided the lazy assumption that soccer in Spain and Germany was lacking in intensity. “You have not been there, so you do not know how intense it is,” he said. A couple of weeks later, he seemed to have changed his tune. “Guys, you have to be so proud,” he said, his tone studiously flat. “The Premier League is so difficult.”

His reaction to the question is now more consistent. He smiles, fleetingly, when he hears it: It is so familiar that it has almost become comforting. He is also, it is fair to say, just a little bit amused by the fixation; it is, after all, curious that a league so bombastic in its self-promotion should appear to be so desperate for validation.

There is, however, a reason for it. Guardiola, in English eyes, is the epitome of Continental sophistication. He has enjoyed unparalleled, almost unbroken, success in the two domestic competitions that might be considered the Premier League’s superiors, in Spain and Germany.

He is also — from what he wears to how he thinks — resolutely other. He eschews both the traditional options for Premier League managers on the sideline — tracksuit to convey dynamism, business suit to project authority — in favor, usually, of a turtleneck, skinny jeans and sneakers.

On the surface, so below: Many of Guardiola’s principles border on heretical in England. He does not mind that his goalkeeper, Claudio Bravo, is not a wonderful stopper of shots or a fearsome collector of crosses, because Guardiola believes it is more important that he plays a role in starting attacks.

“I’m sorry, but until my last day as a coach, I will try to play from my goalkeeper,” he said after a draw with Everton in the middle of this difficult run.

Nor does he have much time for England’s obsession with the physical. “I am not a coach for the tackles, so I do not train them,” he said after the defeat at Leicester. In a league and in a country that treasures its reputation for blood and thunder, where, as Xabi Alonso once observed, a tackle can be applauded almost as loudly as a goal, such an out-of-hand dismissal is unthinkable.

It is that otherness that makes Guardiola’s presence in England so fascinating, of course; it is also, however, what makes him the subject of such heightened emotions.

In part it is because his endorsement is a considerable prize in a public relations battle; if Guardiola, of all people, can be won over by the idea that England’s top division is the most demanding of all, then it would prove beyond doubt that there is substance behind the spin.

But it is more than that. If Guardiola struggles — or if he fails outright — at Manchester City, then the myth of English exceptionalism is vindicated. The Premier League can continue to regard itself as a world apart. He will have failed the Rainy Night in Stoke test, the idea that greatness accrued elsewhere in Europe can only ever come with an asterisk until it has been proved when faced with the unique array of challenges on offer in England.

If he succeeds, though, then all of that falls away. He has made it plain that he does not intend to compromise his beliefs for his new surroundings. “I won 21 titles in seven years: three titles per year playing in this way,” he said earlier this season. “I’m sorry, guys. I’m not going to change.”

This, in essence, is a battle of ideas. Guardiola, in many ways, represents a new way of thinking. Should he thrive, it would not just represent the triumph of his philosophy, but also the failure of so many of the tenets that are central to England’s identity. That is where the vitriol comes from; that is why it has become personal. It is not about Guardiola; it is about us.
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It's now just a English thing where keepers are meant to stop shots and defenders are meant to make tackles?

The thing about English exceptionalism is bollocks too imo. La Liga is dominating in Europe and I think most would admit their sides are better right now. I must have missed the point of the article or something!!
 
Attila said:
Weren't Leicester like the 5th league game for van Gaal? Surely one game like that wouldn't break him. He was probably always going to be extremely dull despite that game
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Before that game, our games were exciting. When we first fielded Di Maria, it was almost like a carnival atmosphere. Some fans commented that they could not believe that Di Maria plays for us! So much excitement and the attack...oh man....the attack was mouth-watering.
LVG had warned us that he believed in attacking football and when Di Maria, Falcao, Mata, RvP, Blind were all on the pitch, LVG was delivering what he promised. Our focus was to batter teams.
Am I the only one who remembers this?

Then came that LCFC game. In that disastrous game, we still managed to score 3 goals within 57 minutes and had we not collapsed, we'd probably have scored 5-6. After that game, we would rarely attack and as the season progressed we got increasingly cautious.
We did play 3-4 good games towards the end of the season, but finished the season with 3 goals in 6 games. This was LVG's final vision, which continued into the 2nd season. Risk averse, boring football.

Will Pep go down this route? I doubt it.
 
sunama said:
Before that game, our games were exciting. When we first fielded Di Maria, it was almost like a carnival atmosphere. Some fans commented that they could not believe that Di Maria plays for us! So much excitement and the attack...oh man....the attack was mouth-watering.
LVG had warned us that he believed in attacking football and when Di Maria, Falcao, Mata, RvP, Blind were all on the pitch, LVG was delivering what he promised. Our focus was to batter teams.
Am I the only one who remembers this?

Then came that LCFC game. In that disastrous game, we still managed to score 3 goals within 57 minutes and had we not collapsed, we'd probably have scored 5-6. After that game, we would rarely attack and as the season progressed we got increasingly cautious.
We did play 3-4 good games towards the end of the season, but finished the season with 3 goals in 6 games. This was LVG's final vision, which continued into the 2nd season. Risk averse, boring football.

Will Pep go down this route? I doubt it.
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I just had a look and before that Leicester game

United 1-2 Swansea
Sunderland 1-1 United
Burnley 0-0 United
United 4-0 QPR
Leicester 5-3 United

I think you are remembering it wrong...
 
Attila said:
Read the article and cant see what's so good about it?


It's now just a English thing where keepers are meant to stop shots and defenders are meant to make tackles?

The thing about English exceptionalism is bollocks too imo. La Liga is dominating in Europe and I think most would admit their sides are better right now. I must have missed the point of the article or something!!
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I have to agree, the English exceptionalism is clearly bollocks, the PL's top managers are continentals who play like they did on the continent. It's clear that a lot of people have never watched a La Liga game otherwise they wouldn't pretend that they don't tackle or that there is more tackles in the PL, that's nonsense. Almost every spanish teams have a couple of proper tackling cnuts.
 
sekularic said:
The feeling I have about Poop, is that he is just to stuborn. He didnt learn at bayern from his mistakes and doesnt seem to at city either. At times his teams play outstanding football; but he doesnt seem to have a plan b or a propper plan b. Seems like he doesnt want one
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Reminds me of a more successful AvB. He's fixated on his system/style because he's managed two top, top sides with the players to produce it. He clearly doesn't have those players yet at City, yet instead of adapting over time and finding a way to install the values he wants without going full Pep, he'd apparently rather lose games. Fair play to him, I'd far rather he loses lots of game too.
 
JPRouve said:
I have to agree, the English exceptionalism is clearly bollocks, the PL's top managers are continentals who play like they did on the continent. It's clear that a lot of people have never watched a La Liga game otherwise they wouldn't pretend that they don't tackle or that there is more tackles in the PL, that's nonsense. Almost every spanish teams have a couple of proper tackling cnuts.
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Some of our best tacklers like Herrera and Bailly came from Spain too

Anyway shit article...Pep is struggling because he is a bit too stubborn I think. I think he may actually end up outside the top 4. The defence is a total mess.
 
Adisa said:

Good article imo. I get irritated when some suggest a version of football cannot work in this country or the ridicule we give foreign managers when they come here and try something new.
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Reads like non-sense and you could have said everything almost word for word about LVGs United.Rubbish
 
TheReligion said:
Are you joking?
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No. The best you can do is teach your players to assume the best stance(that is, angle, balance, etc.) when going into a challenge, and the energy/aggressiveness you want your player to put into them. And both are things you don't train for specifically. The first one is something professional players at that level should have been taught when they were 10, the second is something you can only work on in pratice games
 
cyberman said:
In any case, English football is more direct so there are more 50/50 balls to be won, the technique isn't as good so there's a lot more opportunities to nick the ball.
Pep is going to have to vastly adjust his philosophy to succeed in England and it's not due to how English sides keep the ball.
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Yeah, that's the gist of what guardiola said. And his answer to it, in short, was that he doesn't want his team to be better in those situations, he wants his team to take those situations out of the game entirely. Hence "i don't train tackles"
 
giorno said:
No. The best you can do is teach your players to assume the best stance(that is, angle, balance, etc.) when going into a challenge, and the energy/aggressiveness you want your player to put into them. And both are things you don't train for specifically. The first one is something professional players at that level should have been taught when they were 10, the second is something you can only work on in pratice games
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Is winning the ball from an opposition player called a tackle in Spanish? Like when you press hard and take the ball from them etc. I think there might be a language confusion here
 
Attila said:
Is winning the ball from an opposition player called a tackle in Spanish? Like when you press hard and take the ball from them etc. I think there might be a language confusion here
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Might be. And yes, teams do train things such as pressing, defensive organization, etc. Basically, all the preparation work to win the ball back is something teams do train for. The actual action of tackling, not really. Defensive players do train on how to defend both on and off the ball. The best defenders don't need tackles, they will rather rely on positioning and timing to take it back when it's not close to the attacker's feet.
 
giorno said:
Might be. And yes, teams do train things such as pressing, defensive organization, etc. Basically, all the preparation work to win the ball back is something teams do train for. The actual action of tackling, not really. Defensive players do train on how to defend both on and off the ball. The best defenders don't need tackles, they will rather rely on positioning and timing to take it back when it's not close to the attacker's feet.
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Yeah I have seen Spanish games (Like Villareal vs Atletico the other day) and I don't think many English league watchers would doubt the Spaniards tackling after a game like that or their european success in recent years. In my opinion La Liga is the best in the world.

But Pep has his team defending in a laughable fashion. It's hilarious to watch....£50m for Stones :lol::wenger: His formations are so stupid
 
Attila said:
I just had a look and before that Leicester game

United 1-2 Swansea
Sunderland 1-1 United
Burnley 0-0 United
United 4-0 QPR
Leicester 5-3 United

I think you are remembering it wrong...
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That Burnley game was fecking shocking. But overall, the football in his first season was better. It was in the second season, where we got the full Van Gaal experience when he fully implemented his shit on a stick branch of football.
 
Attila said:
Read the article and cant see what's so good about it?


It's now just a English thing where keepers are meant to stop shots and defenders are meant to make tackles?

The thing about English exceptionalism is bollocks too imo. La Liga is dominating in Europe and I think most would admit their sides are better right now. I must have missed the point of the article or something!!
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Thought the same. Author seems to think wearing a turtleneck and skinny jeans characterises 'otherness'. Not that Spanish hipsters generally dress differently from the British.
 
Adisa said:

Good article imo. I get irritated when some suggest a version of football cannot work in this country or the ridicule we give foreign managers when they come here and try something new.
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It's not about a foreign coach coming in and trying new things. It's his supporters and people from Spain (Ballague etc) and Germany (Honigstein?) telling us he'll teach us football, dominate the league and we'll see a revolution, that's what gets ridiculed.
 
Just dreamed city will lose 3-2 tonight. Gonna go put £5 quid on it
 
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