Fifteen league games and a relativity small helping of tactical free jazz into Guardiola’s first season as City manager, the dawning of the age of Pep has already begun to chug through its first spell of heavy weather. City play Arsenal at the Etihad on Sunday at the end of a week of diffuse but genuinely fascinating pressure, alleviated a little by victory at home to Watford on Wednesday.
As high-pressure systems go, the current squall does not seem to have a lot to do with points gained, likely long?term outcomes, or much beyond the thrillingly tenacious identity politics of English football. City are fourth in the Premier League, with more points at this stage than in four of the last seven seasons.
There have been bumps and jolts but Guardiola took a while at his previous clubs to groove the machine and junk the spare parts. He remains the acme of the Prozesstrainer coach, whose methods must be taken like a dose of medicine, complete with minor side effects and a need to complete the course.
The noises off will continue, and rightly so given the run of five wins in 16 matches across all competitions; albeit stoked by a degree of iconoclastic glee at the error-strewn defeat by an inspired Leicester City. Plus, of course, there is the business with the tackles.
To recap: pressed on the fact City had failed to “win a tackle” in the opening 35 minutes against Leicester, Guardiola went off on one of his familiar prickly, theory-laden digressions, announcing at one stage: “What is tackles? I don’t coach tackles.” At which point you could almost hear the headline klaxon, the high fives back on the desk, the T-shirt slogans being printed. Oh, Pep. No. Not tackles.
The truth is somewhere in between. For a start Pep was right. He does not coach tackles. His Barcelona crop of 2010?11, the most notable club team of the last 20 years, finished 19th out of 20 in La Liga’s tackle league. Anyone who watched them press and hog the ball knows they still left the opposition battered and drained. Xavi, the best midfielder in the world at the time, was the 285th most prolific in terms of tackles in the division, making 32 all season. There are more ways to strangle an opponent than simply putting your hands around his neck.
The Leicester game was fascinating for other reasons. More worrying for City is the fact Leicester out-skilled rather than out-tackled them. Riyad Mahrez made only 17 passes and in effect decided the match.
Under pressure, holes have appeared. Since the bruising 3-3 draw with Celtic, City have lost all four of their domestic matches against teams in the top seven by a combined score of 10-3. Guardiola himself has been oddly vague in places.
It seems fair to ask how, given his contacts at City, and given Joe Hart’s very public 10-year career, it took Guardiola until after the season had started to decide he needed to source another goalkeeper.
Claudio Bravo may or may not be a high-class shot-stopper but Guardiola has hardly given him a fair shot, signing him on 25 August and depriving him of a pre-season in his new team, some privacy to make mistakes and settle. For a master of detail, a man who never sleeps, brain always whirring like a chess computer, this seems a very rushed piece of major surgery.
City also managed to spend £115m in the summer on players they do not really need right now: two inside?forwards, a so-so sweeper?keeper and an apprentice ball-playing centre?half. OK, fine. But you forgot the full-backs and the A-list backup for Vincent Kompany and Sergio Agüero. Obvious holes remain, holes that Pep, DVD-scouring obsessive, must surely have noticed. Instead, a system has been plastered across the available personnel with all the attendant wrinkles and snags.
This is the dilemma Guardiola faces in mid-season, a familiar test of principle for a genuine, often infuriating footballing aesthete. It seems fair to say that had Hart played the past 14 games and City’s summer budget been spent on a solid centre-half and two full?backs then they might be top of the league. But they would also be essentially the same team, further away than they are now from a state of total Pep, that coherent, fluid, possession?based bundle of Guardiola?spec parts that is the ultimate goal.