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

RoyH1 said:
Read carefully. I did not claim it lacked quality. I said the did not have the "absolute" top shelf talent. You know, the kinds of players that the likes of Madrid, United or Bayern buy. And certainly the kinds of players that Guardiola has had at Barsa, Bayern and now City.

Porto 2003/2004 had a very good squad, specially on midfield and defense. Mourinho did an impressive job with them though.
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I get what you are saying, but I would say that Jose's two teams stand out really - the Inter side and of course, like you mentioned the Porto side.
What both sides have in common were a few lads who were already top draw talent, some on the cusp of becoming "absolute" top shelf talent and some pretty dang average.

Guardiola has had the far better players at his disposal regardless. But to his credit, he did bring back Gerard Pique and included a certain Pedro into his first team at the Camp Nou before turning them into world class players.

Calling them both chequebook managers is not far from the truth, but then so is every manager ever at every club. Only Claudio Ranieri would be excused of being one - his Leicester side were the only side that were inexpensive at the time.
 
PepG said:
So you are saying that his 100 years old fullbacks or always injured captain Kompany or even Aguero for the most part of the season didn't let him down last year?! OK, you are entitled to your opinion but that's just BS.
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Crikey! Aguero did what aguero does and scored goals. Kompany was also injured under Pelegrini. And the fullbacks have been consistent (and aging) for a few years. Maybe Pep should've taken this into account and replaced one or two last season. Mourinho knew that we couldn't rely on smalling, Blind and Jones so bought in Bailly. Pep is a good manager but he has never managed a side that has this type of competition for the league. Bayern has Dortmund for a few seasons. In Spain it's really just Barca and Real. If Pep is as great as manager as people think he is he will adapt. If he doesn't adapt then he's not as good as people say he is. Adaption is what separates the great from the best. Do you think that once SAF won the league in 92-93 he didn't carry on adapting and improving? Look at the list of good managers who didn't adapt? Sacchi at Milan - couldn't replicate his success elsewhere because he didn't adapt. Magath - good at Stuttgart and Bayern but pretty useless elsewhere.
Ultimately Pep is responsible and accountable (as all managers are in all types of jobs be that football or a super market) and it's his job to get the best out of the players.
 
Lord Megadrive said:
Crikey! Aguero did what aguero does and scored goals. Kompany was also injured under Pelegrini. And the fullbacks have been consistent (and aging) for a few years. Maybe Pep should've taken this into account and replaced one or two last season. Mourinho knew that we couldn't rely on smalling, Blind and Jones so bought in Bailly. Pep is a good manager but he has never managed a side that has this type of competition for the league. Bayern has Dortmund for a few seasons. In Spain it's really just Barca and Real. If Pep is as great as manager as people think he is he will adapt. If he doesn't adapt then he's not as good as people say he is. Adaption is what separates the great from the best. Do you think that once SAF won the league in 92-93 he didn't carry on adapting and improving? Look at the list of good managers who didn't adapt? Sacchi at Milan - couldn't replicate his success elsewhere because he didn't adapt. Magath - good at Stuttgart and Bayern but pretty useless elsewhere.
Ultimately Pep is responsible and accountable (as all managers are in all types of jobs be that football or a super market) and it's his job to get the best out of the players.
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Atletí have been more competitive and more successful than United, Spurs, City and Liverpool combined since Sir Alex retired. Such a bizarre perception.
 
Brwned said:
Atletí have been more competitive and more successful than United, Spurs, City and Liverpool combined since Sir Alex retired. Such a bizarre perception.
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Maybe I'm wrong but I think was talking about Pep at Barca, at which time Atletico weren't the force they are now.
 
Brwned said:
Atletí have been more competitive and more successful than United, Spurs, City and Liverpool combined since Sir Alex retired. Such a bizarre perception.
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I meant when pep was in charge, I should've made that clear. But they can't afford to keep up, unless there is a major change in the way the money is distributed in Spain it will go back to being Barca and Real.
 
CG1010 said:
One difference being the original state of the teams both managers inherited. And looking at that list, Mourinho got all the transfers spot on last season (excpet partially on Mikhitaryan) while questions can be raised on the logic of some players bought by Pep. Anyway the jury is out for both of them for the next season, so let's see.
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Exactly my friend. Your transfers have been excellent but to say one should be sacked for not doing the Treble is crazy. Both teams started in relatively similar positions level on all but GD the season before, with poor managers for the clubs although we had the marginally stronger squad.
 
antihenry said:
Don't argue people. You both spent lots of money and have shit managers.
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Both have massively underperformed and it's a big season for them looks like they'll both be breaking 300million in 3 transfer windows.
 
padr81 said:
Exactly my friend. Your transfers have been excellent but to say one should be sacked for not doing the Treble is crazy. Both teams started in relatively similar positions level on all but GD the season before, with poor managers for the clubs although we had the marginally stronger squad.
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I thought Pellegrini was more than decent tbh, and it was just a fetish for Pep that pushed him out.
 
CG1010 said:
I thought Pellegrini was more than decent tbh, and it was just a fetish for Pep that pushed him out.
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Pellegrini was wofeul in his final season, the football was absolutely dire.

We ballsed up by not buying full backs for about 5 years, everyone could see that the 4 we had were too old, should have shipped 2 of them out and got younger replacements 2-3 seasons ago.
 
Lord Megadrive said:
Things weren't going to bad until Pep was announced then the players stopped playing for pelegrini.
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I disagree, the season before we were poor and we'd been pretty dodgy up until he said he was leaving, just we had a run of games that got us within striking distance by the end of Jan.

When we won the league it was as much down to Chelsea's end of season capitulation and adding in Liverpool ballsing up 2 of their last 3 games than MP's management
 
Lord Megadrive said:
In Spain it's really just Barca and Real.
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People keep saying this and it's just plain ridiculous. What do you think is harder to do, being better over 38 games than an historically great side, or being better than 4-5 very good teams?
 
padr81 said:
We were hanging on in the top4 race when pep was announced
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I'm pretty sure you were second and only a few points behind Leicester when Pep was announced, never mind still being involved in every cup competition.
When Pep was announced everybody expected Leicester to fall away and you were everybody's favourites for the title.
Pellegrini got screwed over.
 
padr81 said:
We were hanging on in the top4 race when pep was announced
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Pep was announced on Feb 1st 2016, Table at that point was
Leicester 24 played - 50 points
City - 24 played - 47 points
 
roonster09 said:
Pep was announced on Feb 1st 2016, Table at that point was
Leicester 24 played - 50 points
City - 24 played - 47 points
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Excluding City's 5 game winning-streak to start the season, they had 8 wins, 5 draws and 5 losses prior to Feb 1st. Afterward, 6 wins 4 draws and 5 losses. They put more than 1 win together twice since the 5-game run on either side of the announcement. They were inconsistent all season, and imo unaffected by the announcement.
 
ADJUDICATOR said:
Excluding City's 5 game winning-streak to start the season, they had 8 wins, 5 draws and 5 losses prior to Feb 1st. Afterward, 6 wins 4 draws and 5 losses. They put more than 1 win together twice since the 5-game run on either side of the announcement. They were inconsistent all season, and imo unaffected by the announcement.
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After announcement, they lost 4 out of 6 league games. They were in contention for PL title, not in race for top 4 when City announced the deal, that's the point I made. Not whether City's form dipped or played lost their motivation.
 
roonster09 said:
Pep was announced on Feb 1st 2016, Table at that point was
Leicester 24 played - 50 points
City - 24 played - 47 points
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@cyberman

Adjudicator put it as good as I can.

After our 5th match we were abysmal for the next 33. Never putting any kind of a run together despite clinging on in everything. After game week 9 we didnt win back to back games for 3 months week 32. Long before and after peps appointment and more coinciding with kdb injury.

We lost 5 times before Christmas and 5 times after. Everyone expected us to get our shit together all season and we never did. the fact we were close to the top was more to do with no one having their act together until Spurs and Leicester got their act together.
 
roonster09 said:
After announcement, they lost 4 out of 6 league games. They were in contention for PL title, not in race for top 4 when City announced the deal, that's the point I made. Not whether City's form dipped or played lost their motivation.
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Those losses were to Spurs, Man Utd, Liverpool and Leicester. They were only in contention if you look at the table without taking their form into consideration, that they were poor away from home and unimpressive in big games etc. Those big games came up and they fell out of contention.
 
ADJUDICATOR said:
Those losses were to Spurs, Man Utd, Liverpool and Leicester. They were only in contention if you look at the table without taking their form into consideration, that they were poor away from home and unimpressive in big games etc. Those big games came up and they fell out of contention.
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This 100%.
We lost 2-0 to Spurs and 3-0 to Liverpool, long before the Pep announcement both those sides beat us 4-1 and quite well. We also lost to United whom we only managed a 0-0 with before the Pep announcement. If I'm not mistaken for the entire season regardless of the Pep announcement we didn't beat a single top 7 team until the seasons very end and never when that team was in the top 7. The only reason we got any result against them was Southamptons strong finish.

Pelligrini's results vs top 10 - 15/16

Leicester - D and L (1 point before Pep)
Spurs - L and L
Arsenal - L and D (1 point coming after Pep announced)
United - D and L (1 point before Pep)
Southampton - W and L (3 points before Pep)
Liverpool - L and L
West Ham L and D (both games came before Pep announced)
Stoke - L and W (win coming post Pep)
Chelsea - W and W

Played
Before Pep - pl 10 - w2 - d3 - L5 - pts 9, ppg - 0.9
After Pep - pl 8 - w2 - d1 - L5 - pts 7, ppg - 0.85 or something close...

Basically for the entire season we beat the bottom half and were shit against the top half.

In 15-16 we took 16 points from 54 vs the top 10.
Under Pep we have already improved to 27 from 54 which is still not great but was the difference in our higher points tally. Taking 6 or 7 more from big teams and we'll be there or there abouts.
 
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Lord Megadrive said:
Well if you only really have 2 hard Matches a season versus 8-10 I think that's obvious.
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Your opponent also has obly 2 hard matches a seasons, vs 8-10. Means you absolutely can't ever let up, and any game you don't win might end up costing you the title

Margin for error is massively smaller
 
giorno said:
Your opponent also has obly 2 hard matches a seasons, vs 8-10. Means you absolutely can't ever let up, and any game you don't win might end up costing you the title

Margin for error is massively smaller
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See I agree with this. People think its easy to win the title because there is only 2 teams but in reality it takes more points to win the title in La Liga than the prem. The last 4 runners up had 90, 90, 92 and 87 (2nd and 3rd) points. I don't think any of the english sides could put up that kind of consistency in that league.
 
Pellegrini won 96 points as a coach of Real Madrid and ended up second in La Liga:lol: Pep's Barca won the title in that season with 3 points more..
 
So many new players. It's going to take them a while to gel. We'll have to get our act together by then.
 
VorZakone said:
No they don't have the players for a CL win. Their centre midfield is lacking in quality and their defence is still suspect however if they get Mendy too that'd be a good transfer for them. Also their offense isn't strong enough to win the CL.
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I don't think you have to be "good enough" to win a cup competition. The teams who've reached the final in recent years have just gone into the tournament with a suitable, organised system, and performed well.

Although, if the unlikely happens and we do manage to lure Sanchez from Arsenal, I think a front line of Bernardo Silva, De Bruyne, Silva, Sanchez and Aguero, with Sterling, Sané and Jesus in support would be more than good enough to make a strong attempt at reaching the latter stages.
 
What a fantastic manager pep is, it's unbelievable how well he does when he's either got two squads of the two best teams in the world or spends 500 billionty pounds on every top player possible, I just don't know how he does it, he's a bloody genius.
 
Crashoutcassius said:
This is my point , when you say 'with the side he's got' we are talking about wanyama dier kane alli walker rose etc. Nobody 4 years ago said they would be the best players in the league. Wonder would they be anywhere near at good without poch
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Pochettino teams seem to do well in the metrics you would want. I think he's for real and as good as the other top managers. Not hiring him after Moyes was fired and letting him go to Spurs was a mistake, instead we went with Van Gaal because he was experienced instead of trying to figure out who the next great manager was.
 
So I watched a 10min vid of their new goalie Ederson. There was some atrocious finishing going on so there weren't many excellent saves in the video but you can tell the guy has Neuer-esque fearlessness. He regularly comes out and he's confident in handling the ball. It's always interesting to see how goalies perform in the PL though. Bravo was a good GK at Barca by any means.
 
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