A contract extension gives the manager time to revamp, adapt to new challenges and address unfinished businessManchester City’s longest-serving manager was a tactical innovator born far from England who pioneered the use of a withdrawn centre-forward. Pep Guardiola will still have a long way to go to match the 13 years the India-born Les McDowall, who won the 1956 FA Cup and devised the Revie plan, spent in charge of City but if he sees out his new contract he will have been there for seven, more than anybody else other than Wilf Wild, who saw the club through the second world war.Seven years at any club represents a remarkable achievement in the modern game, particularly at one so historically...
With players now quicker and stronger, the champions can further expose Pep Guardiola’s misfiring side, whose ability to stop the opposition passing is waningSunday’s meeting of Manchester City and Liverpool is not just between the past two Premier League champions and the two favourites to win the title this season or even Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp, it is also a meeting of two different modes of pressing.The tactical centre of European football is shifting. While the four German sides lead or are level on points at the top of their Champions League groups, Spanish clubs are struggling. It is true Barcelona and Real Madrid have specific issues of politics and recruitment, but there is also something more fundamental that...
If City’s players are not bored of Guardiola, Sunday’s fascinating test against Liverpool would be a good point to show itWhen the history of this season comes to be written the meeting of Liverpool and Manchester City on Sunday might not be seen as decisive in the title race, as these two sides’ encounters have been in the recent past, but with the situations they find themselves in the match looks absolutely fascinating. There is pressure on both sides this season, City wanting to knock Liverpool off their perch and the champions desperate to raise the trophy again, hopefully with fans there to see it this time, and perhaps this weekend we will see who is coping with it the...
Manchester City kick off against a side that beat them twice last season and a player who exploits their weaknesses ruthlesslyWhen Pep Guardiola was a little boy growing up in Santpedor, they warned darkly of such things. There would come, they said, an opponent too terrible to contemplate. It would be huge, yet quick. It would have prodigious strength, yet the most delicate feet. It would devastate its enemies with its power, yet practise also the most sublime skill. It would be a chimera, crafted both by La Masia and by Tony Pulis. Its mighty arms would drip with oil so no man could hold it. It would know Guardiola’s weakness and exploit it ruthlessly. On the nights when sleep...
A possible Pep and Leo show at the Etihad is a mouthwatering prospect but a defensive rejig is more pressing for the club’s title ambitions than the addition of a strolling goalscoring geniusA fortnight ago, two key storylines emerged from Lisbon. There was the collapse of Barcelona and another premature Manchester City exit. From a narrative point of view, the reunion of Lionel Messi and Pep Guardiola makes perfect sense, a fusion of two current storylines, the rekindling of one of football’s great romances. Related: The end of the affair: after Messi, Barcelona will never be the same | Sid Lowe Messi is not the solution to a glass jaw, just a finer grade of crystal Related: Messi to Manchester...