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
Manchester City under Pep Guardiola | Pep on City v Liverpool ref: "He likes to be special"
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City's squad is and has been overrated. Every year for about six years they've been talked up on here at the start of a season as the team to beat and how they can run away with it. Then their poor depth, poor defensive options and aging core get unraveled. Time and again.
As for the managers, what I mean is they get too much credit when things go well, too much criticism when they don't. Once upon a time I used to side by the idea the manager is the most important person at the club but not for a long while now. Us having Sir Alex for all those years clouded things but he was the last of his kind. Now we are just another club who will have cycles of 3-4 years most likely. The people behind the scenes are the custodians of the club.
In addition, there is only so much a manager can do. Barking instructions on the touchline looks the right thing to a fan, but I'm doubtful whether they make a real difference in a cauldron of thousands of loud supporters. The cult of personality also makes me cynical towards how important a manager is. For example 'he lost the dressing room' is code for 'they didn't like him'. Out goes that manager, in comes another and booom......immediately things pick up......'new manager bounce'.
Agreed no manager in these crazy times would have taken a punt on them being as good as they have turned out to be, let alone become full England internationals. Like I said, there's no doubting the tremendous work he's done. But you would find it hard to argue - without winning any trophy, it doesn't really crown all his efforts to bring Spurs upto the pedestal they are at now. Same went for the superb Bayern team of 2012, everyone felt it was a pity till they lost to Chelsea before they made amends by winning the treble next year.
I am saying that once this Spurs side reached its potential, it then becomes anyone's guess so as to why they are not able to win a trophy. Has it got to do more with the manager and his inability to transform a good side into a great one? Only time will tell; I do hope they win sooner than later.
Having said that, there was a lot of top shelf talent there.
Not bad considering that he had Maniche, Deco, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, and Costinha to boot. They formed the crux of the golden generation of the Portuguese side that lost out after coming so desperately close to winning at Euro 2004.
He did pick up the side and outplayed several sides that were some notches higher but you cannot claim that Porto side lacked quality; it did anything but.
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.
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.
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.
Atletí have been more competitive and more successful than United, Spurs, City and Liverpool combined since Sir Alex retired. Such a bizarre perception.
Maybe I'm wrong but I think was talking about Pep at Barca, at which time Atletico weren't the force they are now.
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.
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.
Both have massively underperformed and it's a big season for them looks like they'll both be breaking 300million in 3 transfer windows.
I thought Pellegrini was more than decent tbh, and it was just a fetish for Pep that pushed him out.
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.
Things weren't going to bad until Pep was announced then the players stopped playing for pelegrini.
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
We were hanging on in the top4 race when pep was announced
Fair enough, I thought that you guys were top two and it went to shite once Pep got announced.
£45m + £5m add ons. Decent if you think Stones went for £50m.
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?
Well if you only really have 2 hard Matches a season versus 8-10 I think that's obvious.
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.
@JOE_co_uk: £50m for Kyle Walker. Pep Guardiola's plan is coming together...
I'm not sure which was worse, the rudigger reveal or that trash.
Ah, another nugget to add to the myths thread.
So you would say a game of Barca/Madrid versus Eibar is as hard game for them as Chelsea/United/Arsenal etc vs Burnley? Considering that Burnley could probably outspend 3/4's of the sides in la Liga?
Pep was announced on Feb 1st 2016, Table at that point was
Leicester 24 played - 50 points
City - 24 played - 47 points
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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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So many fast players in their team now, if they click (which I doubt they fully will), they should be fun to watch tbh.
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
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
Pep's Barca won the title in that season with 3 points more..
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.
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.