Pep Guardiola's adventures in Manchester City

Well said pic.twitter.com/JDGTpYgJ2g

— Mohamed Moallim (@iammoallim) October 21, 2016

Jacob Steinberg wrote:Premier League should learn from Pep Guardiola, not pour scorn on him

What is your favourite thing about the Premier League, Pep? Is it the intensity or is it the passion? The intense passion or the passionate intensity? Maybe it’s the intense intensity. Or maybe it’s the passionate passion. Maybe it’s both. Take your time. You don’t have to answer straight away. But you do love us, don’t you?

How could you not be moved and thrilled and even a little seduced by the musky no-nonsense masculinity of English football, where there are never any easy games and it’s so much more competitive and exciting than the craven trash they serve up in Spain and Germany. Validate us, Pep. Hold us, look into our eyes, tell us that we have the best league in the world.

Such was the tone of the questioning after Manchester City were held at home by Everton last Saturday, an entertaining 1-1 draw that took place while Barcelona were rinsing Deportivo La Coruña 4-0, offering definitive proof that La Liga is a league full of wastrels and flakes who are all too willing to roll over and have their tummies tickled. Imagine going to the Camp Nou and losing 4-0. What a bunch of losers.

However Guardiola, who has handed out several painful lessons to English clubs with Barcelona and Bayern Munich, refused to play along. “None of you have been in La Liga or the Bundesliga to know how intense it is,” he said. “You have to have respect for the other leagues and the way they play.”

The problem for Guardiola is trying to satisfy that neediness, that desire for the sophisticated, suave, garlanded foreign man to tell us how awesome the Premier League is, with its habit of serving up matches as chokingly dull as Red Monday’s Liverpool v Manchester United extravaganza.

Guardiola can cut a cold presence in his public appearances, his broken English often quite difficult to understand, his obsessive academic air making him somehow less approachable. Where’s his banter? Why won’t this tactics square give us any bantz? If the smartest kid in school won’t dance for the cameras, if he won’t soothe our insecurities and lavish praise on our moneyed league, then he needs to be taken down a notch or two. We don’t like experts in this country any more. We definitely don’t like foreign experts.

It has been possible to detect an undercurrent of resistance to Guardiola in England for a while, typified by that ludicrous suggestion that his hallowed Barcelona side would have struggled on a wet and windy Tuesday night at Stoke City, and it seeped out in the predictable reaction to Claudio Bravo’s admittedly hilarious red card on Wednesday night.

It was a dismal mistake. One Spanish newspaper gave Bravo one star and he has been a spreader of chaos since joining City from Barcelona in the summer, goofing on his debut against United and kicking poorly under pressure in the defeat at Tottenham, and there was irony in Joe Hart’s sweeper-keeper replacement conceding possession to Luis Suárez so meekly, the error compounded by the Chilean’s foolhardy decision to handle the ball outside the area.

“CLOWNIO” roared the Sun’s back page on Thursday morning, which was fair enough. It was a pretty clownish piece of goalkeeping, incompetence on a grand scale. But how the Bravo backlash fits into the wider Guardiola debate is instructive, an early pointer about how the schadenfreude would flow if the Catalan fails in England, and not just because he offended national sensibilities by jettisoning Hart with such ruthlessness that he might as well have said the Great British Bake Off is overrated. It is also because he is introducing an alien concept here, redefining the art of goalkeeping by making his No1 play out from the back, turning him into an auxiliary midfield playmaker. Well, that might work in Spain. But try to spray a pass on to David Silva’s chest while Andy Carroll’s elbow is lodged down your throat. The sensible English goalkeeper saves, catches, boots it into Row Z and appears in a shampoo commercial. Inevitably Guardiola, recognising the risks of his approach, defended Bravo. This is how he sees football.

He will not betray his principles because of one mistake. Instead we are the ones who should be learning from him. We drool over Barcelona’s football, marvelling at the way Marc-André ter Stegen instigates moves, and dream of our teams playing like that. But if we are not willing to embrace Guardiola, we lose the right to complain about England’s inability to care for the ball every other summer.

If it is understandable that an idea is taking hold that Bravo is an accident waiting to happen, consider his record at Barcelona. Praised for his “excellent feet” by Andoni Zubizarreta, the club’s sporting director and former No1, Bravo won La Liga in both of his seasons as Barcelona’s first-choice league keeper. He completed 84% of his passes last season. Hart completed 53%. Hart gave possession to the opposition 352 times, Bravo 142.

On the international stage, Bravo has helped Chile win two Copa Américas. For England, Hart has gurned at Andrea Pirlo, sworn at a ballboy and provided light entertainment during the Iceland defeat at Euro 2016.

These are early days for Bravo, yet he is not the first foreign goalkeeper to get a raw deal in England, presumably from people who thought that David “Calamity” James was an ironic nickname. David de Gea, who has a fair claim to being the best goalkeeper in the world, was pilloried in his first year at United, heightening the impression that all newcomers are the new Massimo Taibi until they prove otherwise. Test him under the high ball. He doesn’t fancy it. He can’t catch it. Hit it long. Lob it in that fahkin’ mixer.

But here comes Guardiola, looking to make us feel small and insignificant with his philosophy and ideas. He gets rid of an English knight, refuses to watch a tape of John Ruddy and brings in a man from Chile. So let’s not listen. Let’s not learn. Let’s revel in our ignorance, close ourselves off and wonder why the rest of the world thinks that English football is ignorant. A goalkeeper who passes the ball? Well, the Premier League is very intense.

urbaNRoots wrote:Poor Pep, he totally got screwed by a player who he bought himself to replace a club favourite. That's totally on everyone else but Pep.

Mr Nick09 wrote:Always thought the quality of city's players would be what holds pep's city adventure. He has clearly made some mistakes but dont get me wrong, he went from having God Yaya, prime Busquets, prime Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Alonso to having to play Fernandinho and/or Fernando as regista. there is no that doesnt create issues. From the way they build from the back, to the overall intelligence and quality of the players they have forward. Not to mention we are 3 months into the season.

It's not that there areno easy games, it's simply that he went from teams with overwhelming qualities, to a team where he has some average players no better than those other teams have.