by carl_feedthegoat » Mon Jan 11, 2016 12:50 pm
Excellent piece from the best sports journalist out there.
Pep Guardiola will make Manchester City serial winners... their title rivals should be worried about manager's arrival
Manchester City have a talented squad, but are too easy to play against
Pep Guardiola is set to join City from Bayern Munich at end of the season
Guardiola will transform the club, with or without new stars
The former Barcelona boss specialises in a high pressing game
City will have to work much harder, and will become harder to beat
By MARTIN SAMUEL - SPORT FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 22:30 GMT, 10 January 2016 | UPDATED: 02:13 GMT, 11 January 2016
Claudio Ranieri is, by common consent, one of football's nicer guys. So we can rule out spite and presume old-fashioned honesty as the motivation for one of the most damning assessments of a team this season.
After Leicester City's goalless draw with Manchester City on December 29, Ranieri was asked about his next match, against Bournemouth. 'Believe me, it's more difficult,' he said. 'They are in good condition, they press a lot and move the ball very well.'
He probably didn't mean it as it sounded. Manchester City move the ball around nicely, too. But ferocious pressing? Good condition? Let's face it, if City had Leicester or Bournemouth's work ethic, the title race may already be as good as over.
It is a question of when, rather than if, Pep Guardiola will join Manchester City after leaving Bayern Munich
Claudio Ranieri, one of the nicest men in football, was dismissive of City after his a draw with them
And that is why Pep Guardiola is coming to Manchester.
The rest of the Premier League elite have every right to be worried by a managerial change that is no longer a matter of if, but when. It hardly matters whether Manchester City attract Lionel Messi or a whole realm of galacticos; it is the man on the touchline who is the game-changer.
Guardiola will transform the club, with diligence. Ranieri was right. City are a fine team, but they do not present the physical challenge of many Premier League inferiors.
If they get the ball, and play, they will win. If an opponent competes with them physically, there is no guarantee.
Between travelling to Sunderland on September 22 and Watford on January 2, Manchester City did not win a league game away from home.
Good competitive teams, like Arsenal, Tottenham and Stoke, beat them; Leicester and Manchester United, hard-working and organised, earned draws. So, less excusably, did Aston Villa.
City have been linked with the likes of Lionel Messi, but it will be the coach who makes the real difference
City should be playing most of those sides off the park; and they would do, if they worked as fiercely as Guardiola demands.
At the end of his first season with Barcelona, Guardiola spoke at a coaching conference. He did not lecture on tiki-taka, attacking football, the best use of Messi or any element of aesthetic perfection. His specialist subject was as gritty as a goalless draw away from home. Recovering possession.
It is his thing. Guardiola's teams defend by keeping the ball, and stage one of that process is winning it back. They press high, because that reduces the distance to the opposition goal. The logic is unquestionable: why win the ball 30 yards from your line, when you can win it 30 yards from theirs?
In training he works on the five- second rule, the maximum time allowed to regain possession, crowding out spaces and passing options. Guardiola teams harry in numbers, two or three players, while the remainder stay compact in support.
It is an intense process, often flooding a quarter of the pitch with the majority of the outfield group, but when successful in advanced areas the transition is devastating, because Guardiola now has so many players in place to attack. If the five-second timeframe is exceeded, Guardiola's teams revert to a conventional shape, but only so they can begin pressing again.
When Douglas Costa arrived at Bayern, his coach asked him: 'Are you ready to learn how to play football?'
Guardiola's teams are well known for their intensity, something lacking from City's current set-up
It is exhausting work but, with the right personnel, has the potential to make consistent champions of City. Nobody doubts the talent at the club; merely its application.
Guardiola is not about to tell Sergio Aguero how to score goals, no more than he coached Messi on finishing.
Victor Valdes revealed that, at Barcelona, the manager lived by three rules. The first was to have the ball, the second was not to lose it in a compromising position. 'The third aspect is pressure in the rivals' half,' Valdes explained. 'We must bite, be very intense. Each player has a zone in which they should apply pressure and we should all help each other. You can't lose concentration, ever.'
When Sir Alex Ferguson wrote the foreword for Guillem Balague's biography of Guardiola, it was interesting that he, too, singled out what some would regard as his subject's most earthbound objective.
Jurgen Klopp has shown this season that high-intensity pressing does not always get results in England
'Guardiola has taken certain areas to another level, such as pressing the ball,' he wrote. 'Barcelona's disciplined style of play and work ethic has become a trademark of all his teams.'
That athleticism is present in the forward play, too. Guardiola does not talk of his players dribbling a ball, but running with it.
He is very sure of these principles. On the day Douglas Costa arrived at Bayern Munich from Shakhtar Donetsk, his new coach asked him: 'Are you ready to open your mind and learn how to play football?'
Clearly, Manchester City can play football, but not as Barcelona or Bayern Munich do. Those teams would not be residing in third place in the Premier League, a point behind Leicester, right now. We would not be echoing familiar concerns about work-rate, particularly that of Yaya Toure, if Guardiola was in charge.
For Manchester City's rivals, the fear is that Guardiola's philosophy and Sheik Mansour's resources together make an irresistible combination.
If Guardiola decides he does not possess the players capable of implementing his strategy, his new employers have the funds to rebuild in one summer.
If City succeed in attracting the necessary personnel, Guardiola can eradicate their crucial weaknesses in a matter of months.
It is just as well he continues to see three years as sufficient at any club. Guardiola's ideology and Manchester City's financial power are the stuff of which dynasties are made.
There will be sympathy for the man he replaces — particularly if City do wear down Arsenal and win the league — but the biggest mystery is why Manuel Pellegrini has not identified the obvious flaws in his team, and fixed them. It should not take Guardiola to solve City's problems.
Unlike the Liverpool boss, however, Guardiola would have a full pre-season to work with his new players
Of course, as Jurgen Klopp has found at Liverpool, a new high-energy strategy is not without complications. Klopp's gegenpressing tactic demands an extra 10-15 high-intensity runs per game from all outfield players, bar the central defenders. This explains the spate of hamstring injuries currently affecting Liverpool.
Yet Borussia Dortmund did not have this issue, and neither did Barcelona or Bayern Munich. It is the shift in style mid-season that has caused Liverpool pain; the additional, explosive workload, coupled with fixture congestion, has produced a predictable run of bad luck.
It is hard to believe that Klopp is genuinely surprised by this; as no other coach seems to be.
It will be different for Liverpool next season, as it will be different for Manchester City when Guardiola introduces his blueprint with the whole pre-season to focus on it. Conditioning work will give way to small-sided, fast-moving practice matches involving intense sprints of the type then replicated in matches.
Guardiola has tasted huge levels of success already in his career, and could continue that at City
Under Manuel Pellegrini City have been easy to beat - under Guardiola they could win three titles in a row
It will not take long to affect transformation. Toure, and a few others, will get with the programme or be marginalised. New arrivals will deliver what the new coach demands. And Manchester City will present considerably more of a challenge than Bournemouth.
That, right now, they do not, is the reason why Guardiola's arrival has become nothing less than essential; and why City's rivals have every reason to be fearful.
Three titles in three years, and then adios amigos? It is certainly not unthinkable.
THEY SAY SWEARING IS DUE TO A LIMITED VOCABULARY. I KNOW THOUSANDS OF WORDS, BUT I STILL PREFER "FUCK OFF" TO "GO AWAY"
