Manchester City finally succeeded in their lengthy pursuit of Pep Guardiola who was a major part of their aim to replicate the Barcelona blueprint at City. The Sky Blues were prepared to bide their time and it is understood even Manuel Pellegrini had an inkling of their long-term plans while signing for the club. The soft-spoken and thorough gentleman led the club well in his three years here and delivered 3 trophies in his time. Starting off with a bang he won the Premier League and Carling Cup in his very first year. He was widely lauded for the free-flowing and attacking displays of his team. Opponents openly described them as the best team in the world and they went on a 20-match unbeaten run where they drew only twice.
But we will be talking about Pep Guardiola. While City are still attractive and still set up to score lots of goals and never cease to attack, there are a few fundamental differences, though most of it is in the mentality and is more complex in nature.
Guardiola is a hard task-master. But his focus is not only to win matches. He won’t be making a player train overtime just to win matches in the weekend. He strives for perfection. In his players, in his build-up and how his results shape up.
RUTHLESSNESS
He has been more ruthless than the previous manager. While Pellegrini probably sought to see out the issues, Pep is pro-active and with his combative style aims to weed out the issue and remove it from the system. He put the players on alert by sending a handful of first-team stars on loan and freezing out one of City’s most influential players ever- Yaya Toure and sending Joe Hart out on loan after deciding he was unfit for his system.
REINVENTED PLAYERS
He has reinvented a host of players and applied his theory to make the likes of Kolarov look like good footballers. Pep always had a penchant for versatile players and he demonstrated this in his previous clubs, most notably at Bayern. Fernando has been given a new lease of life while Zabaleta seems to have finally left behind his injury and form troubles of last year and looks re-born under Pep.
Yes, he has brought in new players but the way he has managed to amalgamate the likes of Kolarov, Zabaleta, Clichy into his new system is in stark contrast to the listless way the aforementioned players were performing last year.
MAIN CHANGE IN SYSTEM
There can be a book written by the time we finish discussing the systems undertaken by Pep and we are not going into it. But the base on which he forms his theory is pretty clear that he expects and demands that all the eleven players on the pitch defend and attack in unison at all times. While we can brand the players defenders and attackers, it is evident in his pressing technique and his build-up play from the back that even the goalkeeper is expected to contribute to a goal which is scored and even the striker is expected to play a major role when the team is defending.
While this is taxing for the players, especially a bunch who were content with the simple and laid-back life under The Engineer, there has been a major shake-up and there are clear instructions to fall in line.
