On a bitterly cold night in the depths of Ukraine five years ago, Pep Guardiola was asked by a local journalist after Manchester City’s routine Champions League 3-0 win over Shakhtar Donetsk whether he would be averse to properly testing himself by managing one of the beleaguered country’s teams.
He offered a jocular reply about the local property market before declaring that managing in such a place would be ‘not a problem. Not a problem at all.’
The idea of Guardiola managing through adversity has, of course, always been a purely theoretical concept. Producers of a new, soft-focus Manchester City documentary about the club’s fourth consecutive title last season – ‘4-in-a-row’ – are economic with the truth in a section called ‘The Slump’, conveniently omitting a 3-0 win at Old Trafford and 6-1 hammering of Bournemouth to maintain some dramatic tension. It’s not easy making compelling films about a football machine.
It really is a slump this time. One that leaves coaches up and down the land who have marvelled at Guardiola’s teams now looking at his position and asking themselves: ‘Can Pep manage out of a crisis?’ We’re about to find out whether he is up to the biggest test of football management.
The great managers have tackled situations like this by ripping up squads and starting again. Bill Shankly, appointed to the Liverpool job 65 years ago this week, sold the core of his 1960s team after a 1970 FA Cup defeat to Watford. Sir Alex Ferguson responded to Manchester United‘s dethroning as Double winners in 1994-95 by selling Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis and going with what became known as the Class of ‘92. The Manchester Evening News ran a fan poll about Ferguson that summer. The majority wanted him sacked.
Shankly had held on to his first squad for too long. It’s been a common affliction among the greats, including Jurgen Klopp after Liverpool ended their 30-year quest for the title and now Guardiola, who presides over the third oldest squad in the Premier League, with 12 players aged 29 or over; nine of them in their 30s.
Pep Guardiola is enduring the most difficult period of his Man City career with no win in seven
Guardiola is in uncharted territory, just months after winning his fourth league title in a row
We’re about to find out whether Guardiola is up to the biggest test of football management
Guardiola needs the same rebuild that Shankly and Ferguson accomplished and a parting gift from his old friend Txiki Begiristain, the outgoing City sporting director, could be two recruits, next month. Real Sociedad’s Martin Zubimendi would solve the Rodri problem.
For midfield, considerations include Atalanta’s Ederson and Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton, and in attack Ipswich Town’s Liam Delap, whose sale by City now looks rash. There is a buy-back clause. For defence, Everton’s Jarrad Branthwaite and Real Valladolid’s Juma Bah.
But after 16 years turning lavishly assembled groups of players into great teams, Guardiola now requires skills that money can’t help with – coaxing confidence from a place where there’s fragility, nurturing risk-taking from the current reticence, acting as the players’ heat deflector amid the ongoing struggle, seeing talent in players where others don’t, and living with the fact that they – and this – will take time. These are all the real marks of the greatest managers.
It’s entirely unchartered territory for him. There was a very brief blip in his first season at Bayern but he’s never had a crisis so deep into a job because he never usually sticks around this long.
Two fascinating, unguarded interviews Guardiola has undertaken with the Men in Blazers podcast provide the best insight into what goes on inside his complicated interior mind.
Significantly, Guardiola tells the show’s host Roger Bennett that he is ‘scared’ his voice will eventually not be heard by his players in the same way, ‘after eight years with the same message’. He reflects that there is ‘not a book that tells you, after eight years, what you have to do’.
The ‘4-in-a-row’ film projects an air of breezy invincibility among some players which reflects precisely the complacency Guardiola was speaking about.
When Kyle Walker, part of the aged defence now shipping goals, decides against a mooted move to Bayern Munich, a staged scene ensues in which he declares through a City TV microphone, to scenes of unbridled ecstasy among his teammates: ‘I’m not going. The show goes on. This is my home.’
Sir Alex Ferguson was a master at rebuilding and bouncing back from difficult times as a coach
Ferguson responded to United’s dethroning as Double winners in 1994-95 by selling Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis and going with what became known as the Class of ‘92
Guardiola is facing a crisis and a conversation with Ferguson could be helpful for him
Hubris. And there was more of the same from Ruben Dias at Anfield on Sunday, when asked how City dealt with defeat.
‘You know you’re talking to one of the players of one of the teams in the world that has won the most in recent years?’ Dias replied. ‘So maybe have a think about that and be sure we know how to deal with it. This is just part of our legacy.’
Guardiola’s interviews with Bennett suggest that, without a managerial peer in football, it is to other sports and their leaders that Guardiola looks.
The work of Steve Kerr, coach of the all-conquering Golden State Warriors NBA team, with whom he’s collaborated, has clearly left an impression. So, Guardiola relates, did the reaction of Olympic table tennis players – ‘tennis table’, as he calls it – when he watched some of them missing out on gold by a mere point this summer. ‘The look in their eyes,’ he relates. ’Watching this inspires me more than tactics.’ He is fascinated by defeat.
A conversation with Ferguson – who knew the taste of failures as both a player and manager – might be a starting point.
And it’s safe to say the old man would tell Guardiola that it starts with psychology: circling the wagons, turning the storm at the door into a weapon and doing so as a matter of urgency.
‘It’s like getting a wee tear in your jacket,’ Ferguson once said of crisis periods. ‘If you don’t get that tear sewn up immediately, it will only get worse.’
Slot is a different beast to Klopp
It was striking how little the cameras panned on Arne Slot, the quiet man, at Anfield on Sunday, and his press conferences are also in a different universe to the theatre of Jurgen Klopp.
Arne Slot is much more low-key than his predecessor Jurgen Klopp but he is doing a fine job
But Slot’s explanation on Tuesday of why Mo Salah feels he may have played his last match against City at Anfield – ‘Maybe Mo knows more about the 115 charges, so expects them not to be there next season! It was a joke, I repeat a joke!’ – revealed the acerbic wit within.
This feels more like Bob Paisley’s succession to Bill Shankly with each passing week.
Keegan always led from the front
A new book called Panini Legends (Bloomsbury, £16.99) by the leading authority on the stickers, Greg Lansdowne, charts the changing appearances of football legends, as depicted in their stickers. The fascinating evolution of hairstyles demonstrate the effort put in by the follicly challenged.
Ronaldinho, Lothar Matthaus and Michel Platini really did their best. But Kevin Keegan is the pick of the lot for me. Always a full head of hair and nearly always wearing it loud.
Kevin Keegan always led the way with his full head of hair throughout his playing career
Everton stars let Dyche down
The last ever Merseyside derby at Goodison Park on Saturday lunchtime will be a beautiful celebration of the grand old stadium. What a shame that the players’ atrocious display at Old Trafford last weekend means that Sean Dyche enters it under another cloud.
Dyche has seen the club through very challenging times in a way that very few others could and refused to throw his players under a bus, despite their capitulation against a rank average Manchester United. They let him down. He deserves far better.
