by johnny crossan » Mon Apr 18, 2022 12:58 pm
Lee (the rag) condoles with us....triffic
Why Pep Guardiola rotated his Man City squad – and why he was right to
LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 16: Pep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City interacts with Bernardo Silva of Manchester City following their sides defeat
By Sam Lee Apr 17, 2022 240
“We don’t have an alternative,” Pep Guardiola said of his Manchester City team selection before kick-off against Liverpool on Saturday. “The team we selected is fantastic. There’s no alternative, we have injuries. We have incredibly mentally and physically demanding fixtures… there’s no other way to do it.”And, surely, anybody who saw City scrap and battle their way to Champions League progression in the Atletico Madrid bear pit on Wednesday night would have recognised a group of players on their last legs?
Even without special access to the sports science data, it must have been obvious that the same core of players would simply not be able to rouse themselves — or be allowed to risk an injury — for the fourth game of the gruelling series against Atletico and Liverpool?
The manner of City’s performance in the first half will sting. By their standards, they were terrible. “In the first half we were so passive, we were scared to support the people,” Guardiola admitted.
They were indeed miles off the pace set by a ferocious Liverpool side and a calamitous error from Zack Steffen only served to add to a sense of shambles that engulfed the City players, which was compounded even further by a third goal on the stroke of half-time.
Steffen should have done better with that as well and even if there is a multitude of reasons Guardiola had to make changes for such a big game, there aren’t quite so many in favour of picking the capable American over Ederson.
It was most likely based on loyalty and maintaining his morale: had Guardiola dropped Steffen, the normal cup goalkeeper, for a big game, what kind of message would that send to him?
That said, Ederson is simply better, and far more suited to playing out of Liverpool’s pressure. There’s no getting away from that: last week, Ederson coolly compensated for a misjudgement by passing the ball away on the line. This week, Steffen got himself in a much bigger muddle, with greater consequences.
It put City on the back foot and given the score at half-time, the inquest had started and a lot of minds had been made up. Fingers were being pointed at the team selection and, as the match wore on, Guardiola’s decision to only use one substitute. But surely the answers are obvious?
To put it another way for City fans who are frustrated by the defeat, before this run of four big matches started, one of the big fears was that Liverpool would be able to rest players in their Champions League second leg against Benfica while City would have no such luxury and need to fight until the end against Atletico.
That’s exactly what happened. Let’s say Guardiola had thrown out the sports science reports and picked the same kind of team that played in the previous three games — would they have had the energy to keep up with Liverpool anyway? Not to mention the heightened chance of injury that could jeopardise hopes of winning the league and Champions League.
Jurgen Klopp even came to Guardiola’s defence, inadvertently, when he was analysing his own players after the match. Fabinho was poor at the Etihad Stadium last week but far superior on Saturday, and the Liverpool boss put that down to his being rested against Benfica.
Guardiola isn’t usually a man for making excuses, or being seen to be making excuses: he only remarked upon the length of the grass at Turf Moor a fortnight ago because City won. “Otherwise it looks like an excuse,” he said.
Maybe it suited him to cover his bad decisions at Wembley or maybe he simply picked a team, and made substitutions, based on what was best for his players?
“We had it terribly in terms of fixtures and travel and a lot of important games, and that’s why we needed fresh legs,” he said after the game.
This happened last season after City returned from the away leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund and had to mix things up against Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final. These are the decisions that have to be made when a club fights on all fronts.
Maybe City’s eyes are bigger than their stomach on that front: they always push to win everything — admirably so — but seem to try to do it with a small group of senior players.
Guardiola was asked if Liverpool have better strength in depth these days and he conceded they do.
“Right now, yeah, but it is what it is,” he shrugged, before listing the players who were not available on Saturday, even those who were on the bench.
“Ruben Dias has been seven weeks off, Aymeric Laporte (has played all the minutes), Kevin De Bruyne couldn’t play, Kyle Walker couldn’t play, Ilkay Gundogan had an incredible knock on the knee.”
When asked why he only brought on one substitute — Riyad Mahrez — when he had the option to use five, he said: “Riyad was fit, Rodri too, the other ones had problems.”
He was even pushed on why De Bruyne, who had four stitches in a foot injury sustained in Madrid, was warming up on the touchline if he wasn’t fit enough to play.
“Because he can walk and he can run but with the balls it is disturbing,” he said. “In the end, if he plays and opens two or three stitches maybe he isn’t available for Brighton and we lose him more.
“I didn’t want to take the risk of losing him for the next games because sometimes when (the stitches) open again in the game sometimes there can be an infection, you can take a lot of antibiotics, and with what happened in Madrid… that’s why I took that decision.”
De Bruyne was an unused substitute against Liverpool (Photo: Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Are these the excuses of some kind of mad man who thought it would be funny to handicap his own side against their biggest rivals, or the considered reasoning of somebody who knows the exertions of his players better than anybody on the outside?
He said his intention with the line-up was to “put energy in the team” but, clearly, the first half was nowhere near good enough — in the face of what Klopp called one of the best Liverpool performances of his time in charge.
Remarkably, City had Liverpool somewhat rattled after the break. Not throughout, and not to the extent of last weekend in Manchester, and perhaps it was because Klopp’s men relaxed on their healthy lead, but a Jack Grealish goal at the start of the second half and a Bernardo Silva tap-in at the very end meant that even on this most disappointing of afternoons, there wasn’t as much to separate the sides as it initially appeared.
Had Gabriel Jesus converted a gilt-edged chance with 20 minutes to go, things really would have been interesting. An argument for a clinical finisher if ever there was one.
Instead, the Liverpool fans’ celebrations at the final whistle will serve as evidence of another momentum swing, that they could really be on the verge of a quadruple. There will be no treble for City now, we know that much.
That will sting, especially for the City supporters who had four or five hours on a sweaty coach heading up the M6 to stew on it all, but if the changes at Wembley resulted in Liverpool reaching another final, the intention behind them was for City to be as well prepared as possible to stop them winning the rest.
