Everyone has flukes, that is normal. With long careers it's also normal to have several flukes.
Most people here aren't saying Guardiola is not a good manager. He obviously is.
But what this thread is about is if he is the greatest manager of all time.
And there is gets subjective of course.
The problem with losing to Lyon isn't that in itself, like I said flukes are normal.
The problem of the claim that he is the greatest manager ever is that this happened
many times. He has failed in the CL against teams that in theory are weaker than his'
several times. And this IS a very compelling (subjective) argument that he might not be the greatest ever.
If he the best manager of all times wouldn't you expect him to get through teams weaker than his
most times?
And it's not just the weak teams, when faced with teams with similar quality to his'
most of the times he can't get past them as well.
And then you have the case of when he has had teams weaker than his opponents'. Which in his case is something that is very rare. With other manager we do have a lot more examples of this.
So with strong team vs weak foe I would argue he is worse/equal to other great managers of the last 20 years.
With strong team vs strong foe I would argue he is equal to other great managers of the last 20 years.
With weak team vs strong foe we barely have data on him to compare to others, he rarely is in this situation.
This is the CL talk, what about the leagues?
In Barcelona B he was a contender to go up (iirc, please confirm) and he delivered.
In Barcelona he inherited a very good squad, that had a very bad season the year before but the same squad had won the CL 2 years before - it surely couldn't have been that bad. He also had some recent Euro champion players in the team.
He gets the credit, correctly, that regardless of the players he had to build Barcelona up to one of the strongest teams in history. He won many titles and 2 CLs with the teams he built.
He did eventually "let" Real catch up to him (Real spent a fortune) and he lost the league (normal vs a similar quality rival) and was eliminated by Chelsea, which again is a fluke and happens.
He left when the rival team had catched up to the quality of his teams, this is a viable criticism imho but he wanted a new project and that's pretty normal, he had won everything multiple times there, he didn't need to prove himself in Barcelona again.
He goes to Bayern, that had won a treble and that has won many german titles in the previous years, also having reached 3 finals in the previous 4 years.
He inherits a super strong team and wins the bundesliga 3 years in a row. That was pretty normal given the state of the team he had and the competition that had inferior resources.
In the CL he loses to equal or worse teams, basically he did an average job there, just normal.
He goes to City, that just like Barcelona, have had a previous bad season but had been champion before that. He inherits a very good squad with some of the best players in the League. And he has free reign to buy players, in his stint here he has the ability to buy anyone he wants and to get rid of expensive players he doesn't want to.
And his rivals? Leicester had just been champion, which starts to show the state of his rivals.
United had an horrendous squad, Arsenal was in his 4th place champion state of mind, Liverpool had an average squad and had finished 8th, Chelsea had a good squad but had a calamitous season with the Mourinho turmoil and Tottenham had a good put up team but not on outstanding player quality to compete every year (like Leicester).
For me at least only Chelsea had a squad (player quality) of similar quality to his, everyone else had worse squads, some like Tottenham and Leicester had a good team setup that could make them compete.
So he picks the team in 4th place and with one of the 2 best squads, also spending even more, ends up in 3rd place. That is normal, a bit of underperforming but it's ok.
In the following years he kept buying and buying to the point his squad is so much better than his rivals', I'm sorry but I cannot state this enough. He had the best team in England by far - his bench players would walk in most of his rivals' starting XI.
Leicester and Tottenham couldn't keep with the same team overarchieveing and fell as normal, Arsenal was doing Arsenal things, United kept spending but even in best case scenario would need several years to have at least a good quad (hint: they didn't even do that
), Chelsea kept having good to ok squads and Liverpool improved the squad. So imho only Chelsea and Liverpool did have good enough squads to compete with him - but still nowhere near his squads' quality.
And what is the result?
He wins most leagues, losing some to Liverpool and Chelsea (first year). Wins other cups, like the other teams.
And in the CL, with this strong squad, he manages the same real output as Chelsea and Liverpool - 1 victory.
So in his stint he England I would say he did a job SIMILAR to what other good managers would do.
Give the City squad and means to other good managers of this generation (Ancelotti, Mourinho, Conte, Tuchel, Klopp, Zidane, etc), give them the rivals Guardiola had, and I would argue they would have similar results to what he had.
5 Leagues in 7 years, 1 CL in the same period. I would say they would get similar results, probably something like 3/4 Leagues in 7 years and 2 CL in the same period.
So imho what he did and won is in the same ballpark, not above, what other managers would do when in his situation.
I don't pretend to know who is the best (TM) manager but honestly I can't see him being above other good managers of this generation when you contextualise his and the others' contexts.
If the "but he won so context doesn't matter" argument is what you bring, well I respect but I disagree, Santos won an Euro and Deschamps a WC but I don't consider that enough to prove they are better than other national team managers of that generation.
