Cybereagles

tfco wrote:

Pep Guardiola was hired to win the Champions League for Manchester City and on Wednesday night they crashed out in the last 16 at the hands of Monaco. This is the unpalatable truth Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the chairman, and the chief executive-sporting director axis of Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain have to digest with year one of their Get Guardiola master plan in tatters.

If the Catalan was not required to win the competition in his first season the absolute minimum was to elevate style and offer clear evidence City are only fractions from breaking into the continental elite headed by Barcelona and Real Madrid. Instead Guardiola’s team were knocked out two rounds earlier than last term, when Manuel Pellegrini took City to the European Cup semi-finals for the first time. The Chilean was sacked by Mubarak despite that achievement, the claiming of the second League Cup of his tenure, and a fourth-placed finish last May.

After dismissing the man who had won the Premier League title two years before, the chairman left scant doubt as to the view from Abu Dhabi. “All of us came with high expectations for this season, and I cannot hide the disappointment of myself, obviously Sheikh Mansour [the owner], I know the fans of the club, and I’m sure the entire team,” he said.

So how will Mubarak assess Guardiola, the coach City pursued for four years until finally announcing his arrival 13 months ago? If Pellegrini had regressed by two stages in the Champions League after going into Wednesday’s second leg holding a two-goal cushion with no plan to protect this other than the crapshoot of all-out attack, what would be Mubarak’s analysis?

Because this is what the gilded Guardiola did. This was his Plan A, B, C and D: hope the attack clicks and goals are piled up. If not, well, face potential obliteration. Holding a 5-3 lead then hearing their manager talk of City being “killed” if they failed to score against Monaco should sound the alarm for the club’s hierarchy.

The 46-year-old’s determination to play scintillating football does not mean he cannot be streetwise, too. Guardiola, the man who says he does not coach tackles, seems to think the balance is impossible. Unless being in possession of Lionel Messi (as Guardiola was when winning two Champions League finals with Barcelona) this is how most coaches engineer triumph in the competition. Imagine how José Mourinho, who has won the Champions League with Porto in Portugal and Internazionale in Italy, would have approached Wednesday having a two-goal lead over Ligue 1 leaders whose 126 goals in all competitions made them the highest scorers of sides in Europe’s top five leagues.

The point Guardiola makes that attack can be the best form of defence is taken but what happens if a frontline of David Silva, Leroy Sané, Sergio Agüero, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne stink the place out as they did for most of the match in southern France? This is where a robust defence and midfield should earn their corn. But the problem is that Guardiola’s rearguard is a liability and choosing a five-man attack meant no room for a second holding midfielder to aid Fernandinho.

The manager insisted City went out solely because of an awful first half at the Stade Louis II. There is no argument that to trail 2-0 at the break and be 5-5 on aggregate was a near-disaster. The clue here, though, is the scoreline. To concede five times in 135 minutes of football, allowing three of these at the Etihad Stadium, is just too many at elite level: the statistic confirming this is that City ended the night as the first team to score five times in the first leg and still be eliminated during the knockout rounds.

At 5-5 City were going out because of those three away goals conceded by their powder-puff backline: whatever Guardiola claims, defence is his and City’s glaring faultline. Even when Sané scored on 71 minutes to put the Catalan’s men on course for the quarter-finals, there was an inevitability about Tiemoué Bakayoko’s decisive finish. Up went a Monaco free-kick, up rose the midfielder, down fell the unreliable Aleksandar Kolarov and Bakayoko headed home.

Afterwards the manager swatted away any notion that the defence was culpable, pointing instead at the forwards and implying again his attack-attack philosophy is non-negotiable because he knows no other way.

City were also, at times, hamstrung by Pellegrini’s similar insistence and the Chilean was criticised for being a one-trick tactical pony. Yet at least his City were far more parsimonious than Guardiola’s. In 12 group and knockout games last season the Chilean’s side conceded 12 goals. In six group and two last-16 matches this campaign, Guardiola’s City conceded 16 – two per outing, an average twice as many as that of Pellegrini’s side.

Just as damning is that City rank joint-bottom – with Arsenal – of the 16 teams who played eight games in the Champions League proper this season. How different would their fortunes be if they had conceded only the two that Juventus did? Or, given their firepower, the four by Atlético Madrid, six by Porto and Sevilla, or the eight by Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen and Leicester City?

Yet even though his forwards scored six times against Monaco, Guardiola still pointed the finger at the attack rather than a defence that shipped six. “Our strikers have to be aggressive and pick the ball up, but we didn’t. That’s why we are out,” he said.

Now City must refocus on the FA Cup semi-final with Arsenal and sealing a top-four finish, starting with Sunday’s visit of Liverpool. The wider picture, though, is that Guardiola has serious thinking to do this summer.

The first issue is recruitment. The squad he inherited desperately needed new left- and right-backs but he did not address this. The mistake was compounded by his bombing out of Joe Hart in favour of Claudio Bravo, who has proved a flop and is now dropped. Another error was recruiting only John Stones – who was not the finished article – at centre-back despite Vincent Kompany’s injury-blighted condition and Nicolás Otamendi’s inconsistency.

In all, Guardiola has up to 18 players whose futures he must decide in the summer. One of them is Agüero – once Gabriel Jesus is fit again, will the Argentinian really wish to hang around and does the manager really want him to, considering the mixed messages about his worth?

Once his first campaign in England is over, Guardiola may also ponder the second and more fundamental issue of his strategy. When City find high gear they can be irresistible. When they do not they are vulnerable and can be picked off easily. It would seem a dereliction of duty for Guardiola not to consider recalibrating his ethos to draw up a more defensive blueprint for nights like the one in Monaco.

That way he might mitigate against failing quite so badly a second time

tfco wrote:

YUJAM wrote:At this rate, Pep is going to force a fundamental change in the way football is played in England.

Like I said before, he will single handedly revolutionize the way football is played in the EPL.

Teams are being made to look stupid by his City side

tfco wrote:

YUJAM wrote:At this rate, Pep is going to force a fundamental change in the way football is played in England.

Like I said before, he will single handedly revolutionize the way football is played in the EPL.

Teams are being made to look stupid by his City side

ok

tfco wrote:

The Inheritance Merchant raiding Monaco, but not a peep from stans

1. Bernardo Silva

2. Benjamin Mendy

tfco wrote:

The Inheritance Merchant raiding Monaco, but not a peep from stans

1. Bernardo Silva

2. Benjamin Mendy

tfco wrote: