stupot wrote:Martin Samuel.
Pep Guardiola is dominating the Premier League not Manchester City.
Interesting.
Pep Guardiola is dominating the Premier League, not Man CityWhen their exceptional leader decides to leave, Manchester City will struggle in the same way Manchester United did after Sir Alex Ferguson
Martin Samuel
Monday May 22 2023, 8.00am, The Times
It’s Pep Guardiola. Don’t you see that? It’s not Manchester City, it’s him. City are a well-run club, we know. Intelligent, empowering, exceptional recruitment strategies. Even so, take Guardiola away, and they don’t win five titles in six.
Sporting success is about individuals, not institutions. We underestimate the influence of these lone figures sometimes. Arsène Wenger, Sir Alex Ferguson. We think a club has a way of playing, a signature, when a club just sits there useless, largely, until an individual flicks a switch, ignites a spark. That is what Guardiola has done at Manchester City. That is why this is about him, more than them. Everyone is scared of them. Everyone thinks they will dominate for years. Really? Without Guardiola? We’ll see.
Some years ago, on the way to an England game, I happened to be sitting across the aisle from David Gill, who was then the chief executive of Manchester United. A conversation ensued on the subject of financial fair play, which I regarded as elitist, protectionist and corrupted by a cabal of entitled clubs, such as his. And still do, by the way. David, unsurprisingly, disagreed. I argued FFP had cemented Manchester United in a place from which they could never fail. I asked for one reason this would not, in time, deliver the title to Manchester United every season, as their financial advantage grew ever greater. He couldn’t come up with one, but we agreed to discuss it at a later date over lunch.
Ferguson signs off after his final match in charge of Manchester United ten years ago – the club have not won the title since
By the time we next met up, that point was moot. I was wrong. Not about FFP. Even its staunchest advocates now admit it has damaged competition. I was wrong about Manchester United. Gill’s club hadn’t been top of the pyramid because it was Manchester United. The club was there because of Sir Alex Ferguson, and by then he had departed — and with him United’s dominance had too. It will be the same with Guardiola and Manchester City.
This is why it does him a disservice when contemporaries like Sam Allardyce boast they could do the same job given the same opportunity, as if it is only about the money. When Allardyce was England manager, briefly, his most innovative idea was to try to pick a French guy, Steven N’Zonzi. Guardiola looked at John Stones and saw a hybrid defensive midfielder. That’s brilliance. Stones had worked with many coaches: Keith Hill, David Flitcroft, Micky Mellon and Danny Wilson at Barnsley, David Moyes and Roberto Martínez at Everton, Roy Hodgson, Allardyce and Gareth Southgate for England. Not one of them had spotted that.
So Guardiola’s insights have delivered the league in five out of six seasons; and might do so again if he chooses to stay that long. Having said this, when asked if the Treble could be both crowning glory and fitting farewell this season, Guardiola left the question hanging. Who knows when this ends? Yet end it will one day, and that is why the idea Manchester City will dominate and turn the Premier League into a dull, predictable battle for second place in the many years ahead, is false. Guardiola will eventually leave and the narrative will change. City didn’t dominate before he arrived, and chances are they won’t after he has left, either. Like Ferguson, he is unique for the time. And like Ferguson his success will be almost impossible to replicate.
The plane conversation with Gill was prior to Ferguson’s departure in 2013, and Manchester United are waiting for their first league title of that post-Ferguson era. They have tried coaches of every description: serial winners, local heroes, Ferguson’s own pick, and the present man is doing a very good job — but they’ve never been close. So nothing is forever in football and while FFP increases the odds of success for the traditional elite, even that comes without guarantees. It turns out Ferguson was the special one, not Manchester United as an entity. Clubs are special in other ways, but people win leagues, and when Ferguson stepped down, the magic went with him.
As Guardiola, too, must ultimately depart. City may still have the most money then. But so what? City have had the most money under every manager since Sheikh Mansour’s takeover and it has never before worked out like this. Roberto Mancini won the title once in his four seasons there. City then won a single title in three years under Manuel Pellegrini, and their league position worsened each season, from first, to second, then fourth.
It is Guardiola who has turned City’s obvious strengths into an enduring winning streak. Who follows him? Is there any manager in the game today as innovative? Remove Guardiola and City would be casting around as Manchester United were a decade ago. A local hero in Vincent Kompany? A serial winner like Zinedine Zidane? The next cab off the rank in Arne Slot or Luciano Spalletti? Really, do you see five in six coming from them? Four in six? Two in three? It’s a shot in the dark, as it became for Manchester United. And as this project had its germination in Barcelona, would City be looking for a new director of football, too? Maybe a squad rebuild if key protagonists identified a natural end to the relationship.
All speculation, of course. But there is a reason English football has topped off at three titles in row, across three centuries. Even City’s five in six has been done before, by Liverpool between 1978-79 and 1983-84, with only Ron Saunders’ Aston Villa standing between. And Manchester United did seven in nine (1992-93 to 2000-01) and five in seven three times (1992-93 to 1998-99, 1996-97 to 2002-03, 2006-07 to 2012-13).
So, this is not unprecedented. It is what the greatest managers do. Four of Liverpool’s five in six were achieved under Bob Paisley, while all of United’s best sequences belonged to Ferguson. Yet neither club has dominated again the same way. Joe Fagan, Kenny Dalglish and Jürgen Klopp all won titles with Liverpool but couldn’t retain them, and a post-Ferguson manager at United is yet to trouble the Premier League’s trophy engravers. The presumption that even without Guardiola, City would keep winning the same way is not borne out by history.
Mancini, left, won the title with Manchester City in 2012 but was sacked when he was unable to follow it up the next season
And Manchester City are a more expertly run club than Manchester United were in 2013 when Ferguson retired, that much is true. Gill left at the same time, which many see as significant, while few would make a case for the Glazers’ stewardship over that of Sheikh Mansour. In that way, yes, City are better set up to thrive no matter the circumstances. Yet United, through Gill, had negotiated every advantage within the corridors of power and still could not make it work without Ferguson. For all the fears, for all the conspiracy theories, it simply amounted to one man being very, very good at his job, and then leaving. As that will become City’s problem, too, some day.
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by Nigels Tackle » Fri May 19, 2023 10:31 am 
