“I’m not good enough,” Pep Guardiola said following Manchester City’s defeat by Manchester United. “I am the boss, the manager, I have to find solutions, and so far I haven’t.”
Added to recent admissions about poor sleep, diet and general stress levels during City’s run of just one win and eight defeats in 11 games, there are questions about whether the man who has delivered so much success during his time in England might decide to leave, or even be asked to step aside.
On several occasions in recent weeks Guardiola has said words to the effect of, “I don’t want to stay in the place if I feel like I’m a problem” — as he did in a press conference on November 29.
Those statements are entirely genuine but also extremely hypothetical. Of course he would step aside if there ever comes a point where he considers himself incapable of doing the job, but despite City’s ongoing slump, it is surely far too early for Guardiola or his employers to make that call.
It is easy to believe that this manager and a group of players of such ability should be able to shake themselves back to winning ways, but that ignores the vicious circle they find themselves in.
A perfect example is Kyle Walker. He has struggled terribly this season, but there are not enough fit defenders to take him out of the team. Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva have been nowhere near their best either, yet they have started all seven matches since the international break. Guardiola is a manager who famously rotates his team every week to avoid burnout, but has felt the need to play them every game.
One of Guardiola’s initial ideas when it came to bulking up his team, way back near the start of this dismal run, was to use Manuel Akanji as a holding midfielder. The Swiss is not the smoothest operator in those areas but he is big, strong and mobile, a profile that City are lacking.
But Guardiola has been afforded the opportunity to try that only once — because when Akanji has been fit, there have not been enough defenders to fill his spot. Akanji himself has been playing with injuries and has had two different spells on the sidelines in the last six weeks alone.
There are a couple of exacerbating factors, too. The team’s wingers are rarely a goal threat (plus Jack Grealish and Jeremy Doku have been in and out of the team due to fitness issues) and the side has been lacking a spark. Is that any surprise when Kevin De Bruyne, who struggled in some big matches at the end of last season anyway, has missed 10 weeks with injury, and reigning PFA Player of the Year Phil Foden has been beset by various issues that have kept him on the sidelines?
All of this brings significant tactical implications. Guardiola’s success is rooted in possession as a means to control matches. If he ever has any doubts, the solution is almost always more passes, more control. More bodies in the middle of the pitch. If you do lose the ball, then win it back as quickly as possible.
But in that sense, the solutions have become the problems. City have not been able to rely on their midfielders to keep the ball or win it back quickly, so teams are playing through them. Team-mates are caught up the pitch and unable to get back, and with the defence depleted and/or woefully out of form, there is no failsafe.
You do not win a treble, four titles in a row and all the other stuff by just having expensive players: City are a finely tuned machine, one that adds up to something far greater than the sum of its parts. At the moment, that machine is broken. Even when playing well they cannot win.
And then there is the mental impact of all of this: the team has clearly lost all confidence in what they are instructed to do on the pitch.
There is something else that Guardiola has been saying for weeks. “The solution is ‘give me my players back’ and we will do it,” as he said last weekend following the draw at Crystal Palace, and on several other occasions.
And let us be honest, it must be as simple as that. Sure, they would still be lacking energy in midfield if everybody but Rodri returned in the next two or three weeks, but would they be this bad? Would they not be more stable at the back with Akanji and Nathan Ake? Would they be a bit fresher all over the pitch with the ability to rotate those who have struggled? Would they still be giving up so many high-value chances to the opposition near to their own goal?
There is another big consideration, too. City are ready to spend money in January and beyond, not just to steady the ship but to keep the club at the top level for years to come.
Having made over £400million from player sales in the past five years, as well as banking around £100m since the last accounting period started, City have headroom when it comes to profit and sustainability rules to bolster areas of the squad that are perhaps too far gone.
If either Guardiola or City — or both — ever decide on a parting of ways, surely that conversation would only come after those long-term solutions have at least been attempted?
Even if, hypothetically, Guardiola felt that he could not go on in the coming weeks, you would imagine that his employers would remind him of their faith and persuade him that he is the right man to lead a refresh of the squad.
It should also be considered that for all of the vulnerability Guardiola has shown in various different interviews of late, he has shown a great deal of defiance as well.
“I would regret leaving now,” he said as recently as Friday. “I could not sleep. They could sack me. That could happen. But leaving now? No chance.”
He has talked about his job almost as an addiction, the adrenaline of which he cannot quit even if he might like to, and how the determination to improve has not deserted him.
It most likely never will, and though some people have suggested that ‘other managers would be under pressure by now’, it does not take too much thinking to realise why Guardiola has a bit more wriggle room.
That is not to say that he is completely helpless at this moment in time. “I am completely convinced by what I’m saying that I’m not good enough to find a way so that players find peace in their bodies and mind, so that it doesn’t matter what happens,” he explained on Sunday evening, seemingly saying that he cannot make his players feel relaxed in this run, almost as if he blames himself for transmitting any concerns he has to them.
Whatever the truth of it, not much is working right now. Guardiola tried Bernardo as a secondary right-back to help the struggling Walker on Sunday, with Matheus Nunes drafted in at left-back. More strikingly, City often sat back without the ball and tried to make themselves hard to play through, rather than trying to press high.
Maybe those steps will be enough to return the team to winning ways in the next few games but ultimately they were not enough to see out a victory against a Manchester United side that had been kept quiet until Nunes’ late errors. In the despair of such a late, shock defeat it is no wonder that Guardiola was left questioning everything, not least himself.
But only once the cause of club’s problems is corrected — players properly returning to fitness and potentially supplemented by January signings — would it be sensible to even consider the seismic event that is Pep Guardiola leaving Manchester City.
(Header photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
