Think he left Barca at the right time. He had some of their best players at their peaks & they won it all. He may well have been unable to motivate the players further, this would have damaged his god like reputation. He knew he could take a rest then name his price when he wanted to return to the game. I think most people would say he was out of order with how he ended things at Bayern. He should have extended, & finished the job he'd been brought in to do.
Manchester City under Pep Guardiola | Pep on City v Liverpool ref: "He likes to be special"
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Think he left Barca at the right time. He had some of their best players at their peaks & they won it all. He may well have been unable to motivate the players further, this would have damaged his god like reputation. He knew he could take a rest then name his price when he wanted to return to the game. I think most people would say he was out of order with how he ended things at Bayern. He should have extended, & finished the job he'd been brought in to do.
A good analysis. I can't disagree with any of this and for this reason I really didn't expect too much this season. Although, who knows, without the injuries to Gundogan and Jesus things may have been a little more interesting.
I'm not sure how you can clearly categorize someone's personal desire/wish as an error.
They did though. They were just really good at recovering the ball after losing it. Busquets and Xavi were really great at closing angles off and taking options off the player with the ball, while other players would press and recover.
Xavi and Busquets were world class during that period, but blunting the counterattack is a trait I've seen many good to great players do. Makelele, Carrick, Martinez... I don't understand the notion that Pep's tactics can only be implemented successfully with a world class team.
If 3 semi-final defeats at Bayern (only one of them being an unequivocal failure IMO: Real) are proof that his tactics don't work, then I'm interested in learning what tactics are successful.
They were good at winning it back because most of the time when they lost the ball it was organic to their play, hence everybody was in the right position to press and win it back. They rarely made actual mistakes in possession, and thus rarely conceded chances to the opposition
Depends on the definition of success. It is harder to win cups with that brand of football as opposed to catenaccio(the pinnacle of low risk - high reward). Leagues, depends on the league.
It was organic to their play by design. That's why their possession was lethal while ours under LVG was insipid and tumescent.
Who was the last football club to win the CL using catenaccio? If it's so easy to pack 10 men behind the ball then we'd have seen a lot more clubs win cups using this method in recent years.
I don't think it depends on the league either. La Liga has been won by Real, Atletico and Barcelona, all using different tactics and strategies. Is there one common thread running through the PL victories of Man City, Chelsea and Leicester in recent times?
I don't think he wants to completely replicate Barcelona style of play, but more so I believe he does want to evolve a little, playing in a new league, with new team/players will help him with that. I believe his BM side (3rd year) play different to his Barcelona, he finally found away to get them to perform and evolve himself there and he was a Muller PK away from a CL final and a chances at another treble. I believe he left too early, should've stayed to finish off his job.
At City it's similar he's trying too see what he can do with the team, but at the moment lacks personnel to really do what he wants.
Exactly.
He's well aware of the squad's shortcomings and his challenge is to use the latitude that he's been given at City to metamorphise the ageing grabbag of players into a younger, hungrier, more athletic team to his own specifications using the free hand in transfer dealings that he's been given (FFP excepted) as well as a great crop of youngsters to incorporate if they prove up to the job.
Immedite world domination is not happening but he wants to continue to challenge himself and he has a big rebuilding project on his hands which he will achieve before moving on to the next thing.
Of course it's by design. The underlying idea is a slower, more controlled transition of the ball from defence to attack aimed to control the space in such a way as to minimize risks once the ball is lost. Barcelona didn't accelerate vertically(i.e. take risks with the ball) until both their players and the opponents were positioned in such a way that losing the ball would not put them at risk of conceding a dangerous counterattack.
LVG's teams did not do that, they either too greater risks, or they lacked penetration. I think LVG never truly had the players to play his football effectively at united. For his football he needs two tricky wingers capable of beating their man and create superiority, while he needs CMs who are capable of making difficult passes while attracting one or more defenders on themselves. The idea is to create a lot of 1vs1 all over the pitch. Guardiola's idea is to create 3vs2 around the ball
Chelsea in 2012. Atletico Madrid and Juventus also all made the final playing mostly defence & counter
I think in leagues like Spain, England or Germany, where majority of teams want to attack and will attack given the opportunity, defence & counter is still a more rewarding style than anything else. In Italy, it doesn't work for big teams(well, it didn't until a few years ago, in truth. Nowadays it can work just fine) because smaller teams were happy just taking 1 point
And how do you suppose he'll get that personnel? The best players play or want to play for Barca, Madrid and Bayern. The rest of the teams get good players for insane prices, or promising talents that you don't know if they will get world class or not.
Pep needs a 5 star squad for his style to work.
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Life is short and he needs to discover new things and have new challenges...
He needs a 5 star squad to replicate the success of barcelona. Not to be successful. Two slightly different things
As for best players wanting to play for us, you or bayern...that had been so these past 5-8 years. It's not written in stone that it has to stay that way. You weren't picking players from the top shelf at the end of the 90s early 00s. We weren't either before Florentino. Bayern only truly began doing that in 2007(aside from german players)
As for best players wanting to play for us, you or bayern...that had been so these past 5-8 years. It's not written in stone that it has to stay that way. You weren't picking players from the top shelf at the end of the 90s early 00s. We weren't either before Florentino. Bayern only truly began doing that in 2007(aside from german players)
I repeat myself but what can you expect from players like Sagna 2017 (on the right) or Clichy 2017 (on the left)?
Disappointed by their performance away in Monaco, especially the midfield.
Disappointed by their performance away in Monaco, especially the midfield.
LVG seems to have this idea that he can turn a player to somebody else completely different from their natural game, just based on few good attributes. I meant it's more extreme than Pep. With Pep, he still needs certain profile, players with passing ability, naturally comfortable in possession, athletic in certain positions... and he's to coach them how to position, think, see... LVG tried to play possession football with Smalling. Asking Darmian to cover the flank while partnering Mata! Trying to mold Schneiderlin into no 6 and to play with creative passing and positioning where he made his name and Southampton as all action midfielder, Fellaini as no 9, Rooney must always play & everywhere... Of course he struck gold sometimes, with Bastian, Alaba for Bayern... this type of coaching is his own undoings. You can't just excuse that he doesn't have the players when he should take some blame for picking wrong players when he's given money here.
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It's been agreed by all and sundry that the full backs are unfit for purpose and are out of contract/gone in the summer.
It's plain that trying to get another season out of them + Zabaleta was a mistake but as I said earlier I think that the club had high hopes for Maffeo and Angelino of the Academy and wanted to integrate them rather than block their path with expensive new acquisitions.
Sadly this has proven either a mistake or an overestimation of the kids' readiness for the PL and City have paid a heavy price for this error.
Pep was angry with the midfield and strikers in 1st half vs Monaco for being too timid. In 2nd half were much better and could have won tie but a badly defended set piece and usual wasteful finishing led to our exit.
They would lose the ball in attack, not in midfield. Trying to build an attack from the defensive third is difficult in itself, trying to do so while being hunted in every corner is a mission and a half.
Pep's way of defending can only be implemented successfully when his team doesn't lose the ball in the middle of the park, once you do that the team is vulnerable to quick transition plays(ala what Everton did to them this season). That's because of the really high line and the teams not transitioning back into shape quickly like a Chelsea for example.
Well, the teams they faced in the semi's are the only ones that could live with them on the ball, and all managed to beat the. Barca and Madrid doing so easily while previously they had beaten those teams in the preceding seasons.
Pep is an exceptional coach, but he can't do the job without also having exceptional players. In Barca and Bayern, he had the best players in the world at his disposal and so it was easy for them to learn Pep's style , and they flourished. This is the first time that he is out of coaching the elites, therefore he will have to acclimatise to these new conditions; it's like you living in luxury all your life, then one day, you don't have all those luxurious.things anymore, you'll then need to adapt to your new condition
Barca's players didn't have to learn.
As for pressing, it's not like nobody ever tried it against his barcelona or bayern teams, it's just that most of the time pressing them high was suicide
As for pressing, it's not like nobody ever tried it against his barcelona or bayern teams, it's just that most of the time pressing them high was suicide
This is a huge point, you can press this current City side off the ball (Silva aside), you couldn't do that to Pep's Barca or Bayern. The reasons for this are simple, fullbacks can't pass or use the ball, KDB needs space and whoever plays at DM lacks the ability to use the ball under pressure too.
Gundogan if he can stay fit will add alot to keeping the ball under pressure along with Silva in midfield. Yaya is too slow to react these days, Delph, Fernando and despite how hard he works Fernandinho just haven't got the required abitilty with a football. To play the Pep way we'll need at least 2 fullbacks who are both pacy and good on the ball plus another midfielder.
Having a goalkeeper would help. Bravo again today, one shot one goal.
Hot take, but Bravo is worse than Taibi ever was.
Tbf, without injuries to Gundogan hell would freeze over.
Now you're just being pedantic.
Chelsea in 2012 were catenaccio if you consider it to be getting through because the opposition just could not convert one of the many clear cut chances they had. Atletico and Juventus ended up not winning against Madrid and Barcelona so I'm not sure why they are in the discussion.
And to your final point, the leagues have been won in recent years with different styles, counterattacking being one of those styles. Pep actually managed to win 6 leagues in 2 countries with possession dominant teams. The jury is still out on him in England, but the evidence on ground doesn't support your claims.
How many seasons have you based this conclusion on?
This is based on his jobs at barca and Bayern. It is quite hard to know a coach that is very good when the club he's managing is barca or Madrid or Bayern, but if you look at his style, you'll know that he's very good, and as he had elite players, they worked very well; he never won a treble and struggled to win cdr the next season, he was consistently good with those great clubs. This is the first time he is out of managing a first tier club, so let's wait till next season to judge him
So your opinion was based on barely anything and you've come around to reserving your judgment. Nice.
And without injuries to Jesus, mankind wouldn't know the right path.
Nailed it.
Here we go again 
I would probably bet a healthy money on City chasing Bonucci again this summer. 60M pounds + crazy wages and this could happen.
I wasn't sure exactly where to put this so I'll post it in here.
It's quite surprising that City's record fee in 2017 is £55m, that's getting obliterated in the summer especially with this news.
If some scrutiny was put towards the sponsors both PSG and City would fail to quality for FFP. They have ridiculously inflated sponsorship deals with their owners allowing them to funnel even more money into the clubs so they will comply with FFP.
Because you know more about these deals than the pros who investigate them... Bitter shite really that post.
The deals are very much real and not illegal per say. No one can stop the Sheikh from having one of his companies sponsor City way above market value and by that inflating the commercial income.
All perfectly legal, but it still is what it is.
Should be some sort of rule for a certain percentage of sponsors being independent from or not affilliated to the owners.
Come on. We're all friends here, you have to admit some of the deals at Man City and PSG are pretty obviously suspect.
I'll freely admit some of the goings-on at Chelsea are shady as shit before anyone chimes in.
Bit too far.
I don't remember Bravo letting in a trickling pea roller from 30 yards out.
This may have been true once but not now. Given City's profile now many of the sponsorships from 'friendly' companies are arguably undervalued.
Happy to admit that it could definitely be argued as such when the Etihad deal was first signed in 2011 because we wouldn't have gotten that kind of deal by going out into the open market at the time, but as Polite Poster says we're now in 2017 and the profile of the club is much bigger so City could go out and get a deal that is ironically better than the one we have with Etihad.
What I don't understand when this discussion crops up about companies closely related to a club owner sponsoring said club, is that certain clubs get a completely free pass. Take Stoke for example - owned by the Coates family who also own Bet365. Shirt sponsor - Bet365. Stadium sponsor - Bet365. And here's another more recent one that seems to have slipped under the radar - Everton have acquired a sponsor for their Finch Farm training complex. I think it's something in the region of £15 million a year. The company that is sponsoring the complex has none other than Alisher Usmanov as a shareholder who just happens to be mates with Moshiri at Everton. Rumours are that Usmanov may sell his Arsenal shares in the summer and hoover up the remaining Everton shares but even if he doesn't, it can't exactly be a coincidence that a company he is a shareholder of is sponsoring the training ground of a club that his mate is a shareholder of.
Arguably by City fans only I imagine.
If City didnt have sponsors related to their owner City would be envious of Spurs' commercial revenue of £58m last year, rather then their current commercial revenue that is 50% better than far more commercially attractive teams such as Arsenal, Chelsea & Liverpool.
Can we have him back now?