After a rough week for Pep Guardiola, if it is any consolation, he is far from alone in the Premier League in letting standards slipThe image of Pep Guardiola with his head in his hands contemplating Manchester City’s Champions League exit from a seat in the Colin Bell stand is likely to be an enduring one. This, the unwritten caption will say, is what England can do to the world’s finest coaching talent.To be strictly accurate it was not English football’s fault that Guardiola lost it so completely at the end of the first half against Liverpool, it was more a combination of Martin Atkinson and the Spanish referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz. Related: The bald fact for Pep Guardiola is...
After three straight defeats, City’s manager is not ‘a fraud’ and neither has he been ‘found out’ – rather rivals have realised how to exploit his side’s weak spotsIs Pep Guardiola a bald fraud? Before Manchester City’s three consecutive defeats in the last eight days, this seemed to be one of the more urgent questions of the modern sporting age.It looked a simple enough dichotomy. Is the man who gave us the most compelling elite club team and the finished‑article Lionel Messi, a high‑class manager whose teams retain a skein of brittleness against the best opponents? Or is he, in fact, a fraud. And not just a fraud but a bald fraud. A bald foreign fraud, the worst kind of...
Liverpool were more disciplined, organised and mature than Manchester City, with Dejan Lovren shining light on the tactical input their manager had at half-time at the Etihad StadiumThe Liverpool dressing room was a predictably emotional place around 8.30pm on Tuesday, after a first half in which their passiveness and Manchester City’s excellence had threatened their hold on the Champions League quarter-final. However, while elsewhere in the Etihad Stadium Pep Guardiola was combusting and getting himself sent to a padded seat, Jürgen Klopp was silent. He had a victory against the finest team in the land to plot.Klopp the gurning, manic cheerleader is an image the Liverpool manager regrettably accepts he cannot shake but, as Virgil van Dijk said before the...
Pep Guardiola’s half-time bust-up helped bring Manchester City’s Champions League house of cards crashing downAnd fade to blue. Two billion pounds, 10 years and an entire Gulf state marketing plan in the making, in the end Manchester City’s best shot so far at becoming the champions of Europe was extinguished in half an hour of tailspin at Anfield and the reverberations from two minutes of self-immolating fury from Pep Guardiola at the Etihad.Guardiola was a little hoarse, a little overwrought at the end of this decelerating 2-1 defeat. He insisted he had not insulted the referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz in the moments before he was sent off at half-time for remonstrating in an aggressively graceless manner. Related: Liverpool go through...
Danny Welbeck remains an enigma, Marko Arnautovic goes it alone and Rafael Benítez delivers a lesson to his bossDanny Welbeck stayed true to form by mixing the sublime with the ridiculous during Arsenal’s 3-2 victory over Southampton, producing a contender for miss of the season moments before nodding in the winner. The striker’s header was his second goal of the afternoon and proof, perhaps, that he is getting back to his best after an injury‑ravaged season. “Danny Welbeck is getting sharper,” Arsène Wenger said. “I am pleased for him. I have seen him behave when it was really hard. He had every reason to feel sorry for himself and feel the mountain was too big to climb – right knee,...