His team can’t seem to take any adversity. They crumble when the pressure is on. If they start well, they’ll win 3/4-0. If they find it tough, especially away, they’ll fall apart.
'Pep' Guardiola sack watch
- Thread starter Classical Mechanic
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
All those results are pretty fair but feck me how City conspired to not quite comfortably take six points from those Spurs games will forever baffle me. I think ultimately though City are coming off the back of 100 points and 98 points, so context is important. Sustaining that level was always going to be inordinately difficult (I bet Liverpool suffer next season). The drop-off has just been far worse than reasonably anticipated. The result would still have been finishing 2nd to this Liverpool side so I’m not that concerned, yet. I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen how our CL campaign fares.
Our record vs the big 6 was 10-2-2 in 14 games across all comps and were unlucky to lose the tie to Spurs (missed pen, dodgy potential handball goal, mm offside on the winner) His away record vs big teams in the CL (actually most teams in the CL is very poor though).
In his defence we outshot Spurs something like 52 to 6 over the 2 games and lost 4-2 on aggregate. How far do you think we'll go in the CL?
absolutely. City's past two seasons were absolutely ridiculous and that was always going to be unsustainable, especially with an aging squad that wasn't really strengthened last summer (Rodri is a quality player, but one could argue that him being a completely different player than Fernandinho has caused some problems). Just interesting to see them struggle this much against the top 6 teams this year ... might be a blip or a pattern, who knows.
The 1 player spend argument is a Red Herring from Khaldoon to distract attention from your overall spend. It would hold some water if you didn't have a multitude of big money bench warmers. This is not the case though thus his argument is fatally flawed.
It is true we have nearly matched your spending in the last few years. A large reason for this was due to the over inflation of the transfer market. Our spending wouldn't have been anywhere close to yours if we had been building at the same time. You bought your core players at a stable period. This is not something you foresaw it was lucky timing on your part.
I reckon it's 50/50 on whether he stays for next season. City need a rebuild and don't think he's the man for that.
How do they keep spending £50m on full-backs and yet still need a full-back?
How do they keep spending £50m on full-backs and yet still need a full-back?
I'd say that Liverpool are better. We've won every single game this season bar 3 (Watford, Everton and Burnley) against sides outside the traditional top 6 teams.
We've become a ruthless machine under Klopp and fight like mad in every game. City lost away to Norwich earlier on in the season when the title was still up for grabs.
The Spurs games were just freak results, can’t blame Pep at all for them. I think we’ll get past Madrid. I’m confident we can progress over Juventus/Lyon to reach a semi, too. If we do reach that stage, though, we likely face Bayern. We’d have a chance but if we’re not at our best they could really smash us.
This is where we need to improve so much if we're going to gain any ground on you next year.
We've lost one game against the top 8 sides in the league this year - at Anfield. But we've lost 7 against the sides sitting between 9th and 18th, and drawn a fair few as well.
That's roughly one season's worth of games, but Pep's been around for 4 seasons now. Why pick a random 14 game run from those 4 years?
Also, 'tough games' includes CL football(apart from the easier games).
That always used to be our problem. We had one season back in 08/09 where we only lost 2 games but we drew 12 others most of which were against struggling sides.
You only need 3 players I think. Centre back, centre midfield and central striker and you'll be back fighting next season. Do you see Guardiola staying if you don't win the Champions League?
Sorry I'm a United fan. Probably didn't make sense me posting what I did in this thread so I can see why you thought otherwise.
For what it's worth, I reckon Pep will stay on another year at least. City's big issue is a lack of leadership though - Kompany has been a huge loss and Silva will be as well. Those are the players who drive consistency day in day out, on and off the pitch. Liverpool is littered with them in Van Dijk, Milner, Henderson, Allison and Salah but United for a long while, current Chelsea and this years City don't have enough which results in the inconsistency we've seen.
Going through all his seasons here..
19/20 - 6-2-7 vs the others of the top 6 and top Euro clubs.
18/19 - 11-2-2
17/18 - 11-2-2
16/17 - 3-3-7
So his record at City vs top clubs is P58 W31 D9 L18. - Thats a better record than I'd expected to be honest, especially given the narrative of how he's terrible in big games. Over a 50% win rate from his time at City. Should also be noted I havent used the table to pick big 6, just based it off the regular big 6 of City, Liverpool, United, Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal. Were we to use the top 6 in the league table, than we'd be swapping 2 wins and 1 loss vs Arsenal for 2 wins vs Leicester.and he'd have a marginally better record.
The only major European opposition we really played were against either other English top 6 teams (Liverpool and Spurs) plus Barca, Napoli and 1 leg vs Real..
I've actually done the math and his win rate at City vs big teams is 53.4% which is a really good rate.
To put it in comparison most top managers best win rates for their career is around 58-60%. Sir Alex had a 65% win rate on every match he ever played and he was the goat. Pep's is astronomical of course because of the clubs he's managed.
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He is obviously talking to the people sitting a few seats above him, and out of range for the camera, but it makes for a funny video nonetheless.
I apologise for insulting you in such a manner
You make a good point about leadership. I think it's one of the most important aspects of a team but also one that can't really be measured in any way. I think that for you, keeping Pogba and Fernandes on the pitch together is vital. They're both quality players and both appear to be leaders in the team. If those two keep fit, I think you'll have that consistency next season that you need and you'll comfortably make top 4 and possibly even challenge for the league.
Yeah I'd agree with that. Think Maguire as well, even though he mightn't be the best player on the team, has brought a level of onfield leadership we were lacking.I apologise for insulting you in such a manner
You make a good point about leadership. I think it's one of the most important aspects of a team but also one that can't really be measured in any way. I think that for you, keeping Pogba and Fernandes on the pitch together is vital. They're both quality players and both appear to be leaders in the team. If those two keep fit, I think you'll have that consistency next season that you need and you'll comfortably make top 4 and possibly even challenge for the league.
If we can add Sancho along with keeping Pogba and Bruno fit, I reckon we can pick up 15 points next season, just by punishing the smaller, more negative sides that we dropped so many points to earlier this year. That would bring us to the 80-85 mark so we'd need Liverpool to fall back a bit if there's going to be a challenge, but at least we'll be relevant for longer and it would be a clear sign of progress.
This is another thing I kind of touched on in my rant last night. Their are dressing room leaders and leaders on the pitch. Players like as you said Bruno who roll their sleeves up and set an example that's infectious. Mane is another example and of course tons more at Liverpol. At City currently those players are KDB, Bernardo and Fernandinho. Only 1 of those gets in the first team, the second has been benched for the season and the third is being played out of position if at all.I apologise for insulting you in such a manner
You make a good point about leadership. I think it's one of the most important aspects of a team but also one that can't really be measured in any way. I think that for you, keeping Pogba and Fernandes on the pitch together is vital. They're both quality players and both appear to be leaders in the team. If those two keep fit, I think you'll have that consistency next season that you need and you'll comfortably make top 4 and possibly even challenge for the league.
Look at you guys who are very much the opposite. Wijnaldum is a decent footballer but technically he's miles behind most City midfielders, but when the chips are down and you need some fire/motivation or balls I'd take him over Gundo, current Rodri every day at the minute.
Its the same reason I'd rather see us play Otamendi than Stones or Garcia currently. He might be an accident waiting to happen at times but he shies away from nothing, gives his all and wears his heart on his sleeve. He at least has the desire to win and do his best. Same with Zinchenko. Its why if I'm asked to pick our best XI Otamendi, Zinchenko, Fernandinho and Bernardo are always in there. You can't have 10 show ponies who go missing when the chips are down and KDB in there.
There is not doubting Stones is technically a better footballer than Otamendi, Mendy is better than Zinchenko, Rodri and Gundo than Fernandinho but they haven't got 1/10th of the spine.
Seeing a City frontline including Mahrez almost always means an easier time for defenders with the ball as opposed to Bernardo.
Good post. Our midfield is probably one of the least technically able midfields out of the current top teams but each know their job and perform it (most weeks) to perfection. No way do we come back against Barcelona without Henderson, Wijnaldum and Fabinho playing. The drive, work ethic and attitude that each of them have is worth a huge amount! Ability gets you so far, attitude takes you further.
I liken Otamendi to Luiz at Arsenal. Like you say, Otamendi is an accident waiting to happen and Luiz is just a walking accident himself but both fight like crazy for everything and whilst it's not the prettiest to watch, their hard work makes them really important players.
Exactly, the other thing is I can't understand it with Pep, he seems like a motivated to the point on unhinged guy like Klopp but he (our whoever at City) seems to look for technical phenoms in their signing without looking at workrate etc.. whereas Klopp seems to look first and foremost at mentality. I mean Salah, Firmino and Mane, all seen as good players, 2 of whom as really hard workers. No one could have predicted that front line would put up the kind of numbers it does.
Klopp knows that for his teams to beat the likes of Bayern and City, they need to be willing to work harder than them in the first place. We can't compete in the transfer market for fees and wages so the best players in the world were always going to potentially be out of reach. We have to look for those players that have the mentality to work harder than the opposition and if their talent is a bit better as well, they'll win the majority of games. Klopp has never wavered from his work hard first philosophy. It seems like a really simple thing to do but I don't feel enough managers employ that. Look at your 100 point season. You came to Anfield unbeaten and our players went and decided that they were going to work harder than you (see Robertson pressing your back line and goalkeeper) and we got the rewards.
People talk about whether Klopp can motivate us again next season. The reality is, the players will motivate themselves and Klopp will just help them along.
For sure, my worry for you is not lack of motivation as much as having to physically go to the well time and again. I don't think you'll have a drop off like we have but physically you guys have been pushing it for 24 months. Two 95+ seasons + 2 CL finals. With you guys I think its more likely to be exhaustion if you do drop similar to Klopps Dortmund. You use the same players a lot and are a hard working team, I think next season you'll be over 90 points again but will likely need freshening up the season after.
He won’t be fired, what he’s done at City is remarkable. Does he need a shit load of cash to make it work? yeah absolutely he needs a certain type of player to fit his system and he’ll probably blow £300m this summer but that’s the way it his with Pep, it’s hard to play that style of football without players like KdB and the like and they don’t come cheap.
I agree with most of that and we'll definitely need a few new players in next year if we don't get any in this summer.
I can't say that I watch the Bundesliga much but from everything I've heard and read, Klopp's Dortmund side suffered a severe amount of luck going against them that season to the point that articles were being written on it. They recovered enough to reach the European places again but it was by all accounts a freak season.
Interesting to see how we do next season though as we have decided to drop off massively since we won the title and we're almost treating this as a pre season going into next year
There was lots about Dortmunds luck being bad etc.. but it was very reminiscent of us this season actually.
Its like saying City have had a freak season this season and we should be champions this season.
Its clear to see that's simply not true as stats heavily favor attacking and gung-ho teams (as we are and Klopps Dortmund were). You are deserved champions. I think the good thing for you guys is Klopp has put the heavy metal football in the bin and you guys are a different beast to his Dortmund defensively.
Statistically we lead the league in chances created, chances conceded, goals for, expected goals and expected points etc.. We've also conceded something crazy like 75% of shots on target.
You guys should be on 72 points this season and us on 80 according to those kind of articles and statisticians (really!).
Those excuses made for Klopp at the time were over the top because he's so likable just like if we City fans try to peddle them this season they're bullshit. There is no way in hell we should be 8 points ahead of you guys or that you should be on 72 points regardless of what metrics say. Klopp simply ran that Dortmund team into the ground (something he's learned from). Anyway I'm rambling off topic as usual.
Interesting to see what next with Pep. He's come to the end of his natural cycle with clubs so far. Of course Citeh will want him to stay, like his other clubs did too, but he's always moved on. One to watch...
Jesus, you're a ref? You're a brave man/womanI think most managers are complete cnuts when things don't go their way. Some of the nicest people I've met have turned into raging lunatics on the sidelines during games that I've reffed and then gone back to being really decent after the game.
I would rather have a manager that feels as passionate as the fans though rather than one that sits there seemingly not bothered.
All the great managers, Fergie included would blame everything and everyone before they blamed their own players for a loss. I wonder what the Redcafe reaction to the grey shirts would have been back in the 90s
The grey shirts thing was a classic blame deflection (José was great at that in his time here, too), terrible excuse - I'm sure Ferguson tore the heads off the players in the dressing room
I am a man but I'm not Jesus sadly!Jesus, you're a ref? You're a brave man/woman
The grey shirts thing was a classic blame deflection (José was great at that in his time here, too), terrible excuse - I'm sure Ferguson tore the heads off the players in the dressing room
It's not the easiest job in the world but I'll be honest, I do enjoy it for the most part.I've been called all sorts, threatened, and given the type of abuse that would make your ears bleed but once I've left my house and got to the match that im reffing, it's not too bad!
I've had some very good and some very bad experiences but I've learned a lot and as someone who loves the game, I'll carry on reffing until I get to a point where I feel like I'm not doing as well as I should be anymore.
Between 2017-19 City had Fernandinho-DM, D Silva and Silva. Now they replaced them with Rodri, Foden and probably F Torres. Three clearly inferior players who are also years away from their prime. With Sancho and Havertz possibly joining United and Chelsea that gap will only decrease.
Fair from Pep, i can't stand Arsenal either.
Imagine getting trolled by Arsenal of all clubs.
He really does need to shut his trap at this point he's not going to get anywhere with this and he and City are already in a bad light this just puts them even more in the spotlight when they should try to get out of it at this point.
It's getting really weird the way he's permanently sucking off the sheikhs. Before him you could hate City and the way they acted but their managers were not massive c*nts.
They cheated(ing) the system and the whole world knows it, just shut your mouth and move on. Doesn't he have a 70M CB to buy or an empty chair to talk to ?
I'm glad Arsenal were part of that letter, i hope we keep sending letters and emails to the PL and cc Pep directly. Hopefully Zidane spank them in the CL.
They cheated(ing) the system and the whole world knows it, just shut your mouth and move on. Doesn't he have a 70M CB to buy or an empty chair to talk to ?
I'm glad Arsenal were part of that letter, i hope we keep sending letters and emails to the PL and cc Pep directly. Hopefully Zidane spank them in the CL.
He is such a weirdo.
Pipe down Arsene Wenger, Pep's right though isn't he. Rounding up the old boys club to send lettters to CAS over a case you had no clue about trying to punish a team you knew nothing about other than conjecture in the hope you'd somehow finish above goliath's like Sheffield United and Burnley to squeeze into Europe.
I don't blame Arsenal for getting the other clubs on board though, if you guys managed to try and send that letter yourselves it'd probably arrive late and be full of typos whilst sitting in the middle of the pile and convict yourselves of some crime instead of City.
With regards £70m centre backs we've never bought one. Given we've just lost to some midtable team who fielded 10 clowns and Auba I wouldn't be one bit surprised if Real do indeed spank us.
For the bolded part, of course you do, its the only chance you have of doing anything meaningful in football these days.
That was the weakest retort i've ever read.
Anyway, thank you for quickly confirming everything everyone thinks about your club.
Confirming what?That was the weakest retort i've ever read.
Anyway, thank you for quickly confirming everything everyone thinks about your club.
Your club have being crying about City since 2009 and its hilarious given you bribed your way into the league in the first place. Then when people fire back at your clubs 10 years of whinging and taking digs you decide the other guys are the ones in the wrong. Maybe instead of whinging about Pep they should apologize for sticking their noses into a case that was nothing to do with them especially when they are wrong.
I'm glad we've been confirmed not guilty and we've started firing back at shit teams who think they have a god given right to success.
Especially one who bribed their way in and then became "the bank of England". But yeah accuse City of corruption and overspending when its what your history is built on.
I still hope you win the FA Cup though, Chelsea are going to be strong as hell next year and I don't wanna see them get too confident, plus I like Arteta, Auba and Torreira.
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Wow, i don't know if this is funny or sad, probably both. Wasn't asking for a second confirmation but thanks i guess.
Real Madrid are not out. Real Madrid can go to difficult places and score 4. They still have nippy players like Eden Hazard, Sergio Ramos (think he got a red though), Marcelo Vieira, Luka Modrić, etc.
It ain't over.
It ain't over.
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