The Athletic's take from Mr Lee
‘Emptyhad’ digs wear thin – but Guardiola isn’t right all the time. Nobody should be vilified for pointing that outBy Sam Lee Sept 19, 2021 213
Whether it is a glorious 5-0 victory where they pull teams apart or even a defeat where things do not quite click, Manchester City are so well drilled and prepared you nearly always know exactly what to expect from them.
And then they drop the kind of performance that can befall all the mortal teams, where passes go astray, touches go awry and, at the end of it, nothing really works at all.
It’s a good job the Etihad Stadium was at full capacity otherwise Southampton might have won…
See, it’s quite easy to drift away from the topic at hand and make a sarcastic comment about what’s really on your mind.
That’s been Pep Guardiola’s go-to method for getting something off his chest in recent years and that’s surely what he did in midweek when he brought up City’s attendances.
He claimed that not to be the case on Friday — “interpretation is interpretation,” he said — and he did talk glowingly about the club and its fanbase, although it’s hard to get away from the idea that he did have a little dig at the supporters in the first place and then doubled down on it. That then invited criticism from one of the many fans who took exception to his initial comments.
Perhaps predictably, over the past few days, the media has got the blame for the whole mess, which is primarily between the Manchester City manager and the head of the Manchester City Official Supporters Club.
But there’s a legitimate conversation to be had about what Guardiola said, because whether he meant it as a dig or whether he didn’t, the spotlight has been on City’s attendances, and that provides space to highlight how the Etihad is regularly full.
Since the south stand was expanded in 2015, taking the total capacity to 55,097, there have never been fewer than 50,000 fans at a Premier League match. The lowest average attendance over the past five seasons (with fans in the stadium) is 53,812, and in terms of a percentage of capacity, that’s 97.7 per cent.
So the old “Emptyhad” tropes are more than a little thin but complaining about those means some of the more relevant issues, that actually affect City fans, are lost in the noise.
After all, the debate allows City fans, whether they felt slighted by their manager’s words or not, to complain about the customer service they have had to put up with for weeks now, with hold times of more than five hours a regularity.
Manchester City fans watch on as their side struggled to break down Southampton on Saturday (Photo: Getty Images)
There was ill will over the move to digital ticketing in pre-season, which was nowhere near as much of a disaster as feared, but those feelings have lingered among the match-going fanbase, particularly after the club tried to back out of including cup games in a ticket swap scheme — which was ‘announced’ via a pithy reply to a fan on Twitter — only to backtrack. Other fans have had issues with payments not being taken for matches.
All of these are factors in why some fans didn’t go to the RB Leipzig game in midweek. And let’s face it, your average UK citizen is hardly flush with cash at the moment. While the government couldn’t get hold of £35 billion in taxes last year, they are ready to hike national insurance contributions. Energy prices are set to rise, food costs are always going up and few people will have received a pay rise in the last year, so sometimes things can’t be afforded. If there’s a Champions League group game against a good but not especially enticing European team then that will probably get cut.
Imagine what the attendance will be against Wycombe Wanderers in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday night, and then imagine why a lot of fans won’t be going. It’s fair enough isn’t it?
Maybe all this doesn’t need to be directed at Guardiola, because maybe he knows this already. He did stress on Friday that he’s never told fans to turn up to matches. On Saturday he claimed again, “I didn’t say anything wrong after Leipzig, I said the game would be incredibly tough, I never complained about how many come or don’t come, I have never done this in my life. Of course I am grateful even if 85, 100 people come, I would be happy.”
That’s not true, however. “I would like more people to come to the next game on Saturday,” he said on Wednesday and he’s done it on several occasions in the past few years, all in that classic way of his — answering one question but segueing, unprompted, into a gripe about Champions League attendances.
And then the next question arrives and it’s back to the more relevant matters, like City’s inability to find the right pass on Saturday, or the poor touch to receive it if it did arrive.
Normally if City drop points they are camped on the edge of the opponent’s box, probing for openings that don’t arrive. Against Southampton, their best attacks seemed to start 30 yards from their own goal, when they were offered an opportunity to counter-attack by Southampton’s fairly adventurous approach.
Ralph Hasenhuttl’s men did not sit back and park the bus, as they have done at times before. When they lost narrowly here two seasons ago Guardiola said they defended “like a tree” as he explained why City had to resort to endless crosses into the box.
Fernandinho, middle, had a difficult afternoon against Southampton (Photo: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
There were a few crosses going in during the final exchanges and City looked like they had won it late on, but Raheem Sterling was ruled offside when he followed up Phil Foden’s well-saved header.
But in truth they wouldn’t have deserved a winner, and Southampton wouldn’t have deserved to lose. Unlike Leicester City last week, they were happy to let City find the defensive midfielder — in this case Fernandinho — and then they pounced, closing down his angles. Hasenhuttl said his men played a similar game to Leipzig, and it made for a torrid afternoon for several City players, including captain Fernandinho, who was the first man to depart the scene.
Kevin De Bruyne came on for him, and while Guardiola threw on Foden and Riyad Mahrez, his game changers could not do much to change the flow of the game, as Southampton continued to cause problems by applying pressure high in the City half, forcing mistakes that led to chances.
What Guardiola did say in midweek was that he wanted more supporters in the stadium on Saturday to help the team, because City would be tired and Southampton would be formidable opponents.
It turns out he was absolutely spot on in that sense, but he’s not right all the time and nobody should be vilified for pointing that out.
Goal should have stood. Which begs the question, why did Sterling run off celebrating like he’d scored it?!!
