Dubai: Pep Guardiola must adapt to the English style of play to safeguard his Premier League future and ensure his reputation remains intact.
Manchester City are fifth in the table, 10 points behind leaders Chelsea, following Guardiola’s worst ever defeat, 4-0 away to Everton on Sunday.
The result leaves Guardiola conceding his side’s title chances, but it should also leave him seriously rethinking his approach.
Fair enough he achieved greatness at Barcelona, but that was at a club where he was ingrained as both a player and a manager, where the entire set-up long-revolved around a single vision, and he was blessed with the world’s best players who had been brought up on that system.
If you judge him on success in Europe, he failed to replicate that in Germany with Bayern Munich, but he emerged with his reputation relatively unscathed thanks to their predictable and continued domestic success.
Unlike both Barcelona and Bayern Munich however, Manchester City are neither a traditional powerhouse in a one or two club league, nor are an established and well-versed set-up, that is familiar with his style and philosophy. Guardiola is therefore beginning to get found out.
He was naive to think he could waltz into England and revolutionise the game within his first season simply by reeling out the tactics he had always deployed.
That might work in a one or two club league where you are traditionally the best side, and have the world’s best players, who have been brought up on your system, but in England anyone can win, and not everyone cares how good it looks.
Players are taught to win games by hook-or-by-crook, and tactics and philosophy often come second to brute force, hard work and determination.
Guardiola immediately came in and brought in his own keeper Claudio Bravo in place of Joe Hart, and deployed sweeper-keeper tactics for build-from-the-back, tiki-taka-style football, with a high defensive line that overwhelmed and overpowered sides going forward.
That’s great if you have the players to do that, and great if you play in a league where you get time on the ball to play about, but in England you’re constantly under pressure and any mishap in midfield will quickly result in a counter attack and a one-on-one with the keeper.
This is precisely how lowly Leicester City unfathomably won the Premier League last season, by sitting back, biding their time, and then bursting forward on the break. While Spain is all about skill and finesse, England is about power and speed.
That is not to say Guardiola can’t leave his mark on the English game in time, but first he must swallow his pride and be less stubborn with his system, because it’s not working here.
If he can allow the English game to teach him for a season and come back with some hybrid version, while giving his players more time to show him what suits them, then he may well salvage this experiment.