It is less than 100 days since Pep Guardiola delivered the astonishing assessment of Manchester City that, had any other manager in the Premier League delivered it, would have made their position untenable.
“I don’t recognise my team,” he said, eyes narrowing down the camera lens as he claimed there was “nothing” from the stomach to the guts of players who had beaten Tottenham but only after coming back from a two-goal deficit at half-time. Next he put his club’s home supporters in his crosshairs, accusing them of complacency.
His fury reflected a fear that his team were allowing the title race to slip away from them through unforced errors and what he perceived as focus being torn away from his team by the mid-season World Cup. He sensed a club in its comfort zone.
A little more than three months on and they are potentially just 12 games from completing a remarkable treble. The first “final” of the season is on Wednesday night and defeating Arsenal for the third time this term will swing the title balance firmly – if not quite irrevocably – in their favour.
So how has so much changed so quickly?
Stones in a hybrid role
Manchester City have already conceded more than they did in three of Pep Guardiola’s five full seasons but there’s a compelling case they have never defended better than they are now.
Who would have thought before the season started that Manuel Akanji – at £17million one of the bargain signings of last summer – and Nathan Ake would be part of the defensive unit Guardiola deploys in the biggest games? But it is their physicality and desire that helped nullify Bayern Munich and they will again be trusted to snuff out Arsenal’s not inconsiderable threat.
For all that Guardiola has been criticised for “over-thinking” the biggest games – a charge he sarcastically embraces when questioned – there can be little doubt that his tactical tinkering and shift to three at the back has been the driving force behind their ominous unbeaten run.
John Stones is also playing the best football of his career in a hybrid role that sees him step into midfield from right-back when City have the ball, squeezing the space for opposition teams and setting up attacks.
An elite distributor of the ball, Stones has accepted responsibility for what Guardiola sees as a key role in his new system. It requires vision, athleticisim and technique and in the past has been beyond him. But more mature and with better equipped players around him, he has thrived.
“Our pre-match analysis before we played City was frightening,” one Premier League executive tells i.
“They don’t have any weaknesses so it is about exploiting space that perhaps came as they were adapting to having [Erling] Haaland in their team. But Pep has tweaked the shape to shut down some of that and they have such good players that it’s difficult.”
Arsenal present a different riddle for Guardiola to solve. Perhaps their best hope is that he tinkers once more.
Ruthless Guardiola
There is a memorable moment in Manchester City’s All or Nothing documentary when an increasingly agitated Guardiola unloads on his players in the dressing room before a game.
“I prefer to tell you now, not at half-time or full-time or in the analysis, you have not done a good warm-up. You have done a shit warm-up,” he said, building to a crescendo that involves him threatening to rescind a promised three days off.
It was vintage Guardiola, leaning into his players at the merest sign of standards slipping. It says it all that they’d actually wrapped up the Premier League title a few days before.
There is nothing performative about it, though. The Premier League’s best coach is also its most ruthless: just ask Joao Cancelo, an elite left-back who was sacrificed in the January transfer window partly because Guardiola felt his attitude to being left out could prove disruptive to the group.
That he was prepared to do that despite running with a small squad of around 17 established, elite professionals sends a message to a group who know there are no favourites and that past service counts for little under Guardiola.
Kyle Walker has been one of the defensive bedrocks at the Etihad but finds himself out in the cold after the change in system that he cannot adapt to. This egalitarian approach has seen rookie Rico Lewis preferred to a player with a track record of performing in the biggest games.
Guardiola believes that complacency is the enemy, and submits himself to the same harsh glare of scrutiny. After the first meeting with Arsenal in February he bemoaned his own “horrible tactics” and admitted that his tinkering left City “too soft”. Seven years into his Manchester City era and one insider told i they believe he is actually more driven than he was when he arrived in England.
Haaland is just getting better
Haaland has 48 goals in his maiden season in England but probably won’t have had a more fulsome embrace from his manager than after Saturday’s performance against Sheffield United. He didn’t score but Guardiola was delighted with a performance where only two of his 12 touches were in the penalty area because he created space for others.
Scoring has never been a problem but there have been points this season where Haaland’s focus on the final third has knocked a tiny part of the wider City engine out of gear. When you shoot for perfection, these things matter and Guardiola and his coaching team have spent a lot of time working with their forward on movement and his all-round game.
It has made Haaland an even more daunting task for defences to get the measure of.
A siege mentality
The extraordinary morning in February when Manchester City were charged with more than 100 breaches of Financial Fair Play spanning nearly a decade could have sent their season into a tailspin. Instead it was the moment they sniffed blood.
An insider told i that week it was “business as normal” and predicted Guardiola would use it to fire up a club that he feared had become too comfortable with their own success. In the breathtakingly defiant press conference that followed the charges, he did just that and spun the narrative on its head.
“I trust my people,” he said. And it was the same message he delivered the players, sweeping aside any anxiety that the squad or support staff might have had about the immediate future. Justified or not, it has created a whole new set of grievances with the football authorities for City and their fans to feed off.
That independent commission looms over the club in the long-term but immediate plans have not changed. The on-the-pitch focus has been matched by the announcement of stadium expansion plans that will turn the Etihad into one of the biggest grounds in the Premier League.
And they are targeting a huge move for Jude Bellingham in the summer which will take them up another gear. In the short-term at least, focus has seemingly been sharpened by that adversity.
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