Pep Guardiola can’t hide his struggles to find his perfect team at Manchester City. The manager has spoken to ESPN Brasil and claimed he’d be able to pick a more settled team if he was in a similar situation to Chelsea or Liverpool.
In an interview with the reporter João Castelo Branco, Guardiola related Manchester City’s game style to the short time he has to prepare the team. Whilst things could otherwise be sorted out in training, Manchester City have so many matches that sometimes the proof can only come on the pitch.
“We do control the game, because it’s special the way they play here. You have three or four months to prepare for the season. We have long weeks to prepare absolutely more changes, so we have to adapt and sometimes prove, prove what we have to do, do it in the games.”
Speaking about the many different players he’s used this season for Manchester City, Guardiola said: “I did it in all my career, in that situation. If I was right now at Chelsea or Liverpool, I’d play with eleven players like they do. But when you’re playing three games a week, I prefer to rotate the team.”
Castelo Branco mentioned the fact that some journalists in England claimed Guardiola would like to change the local style, that his arrival was more than simply to manage a team. But the Manchester City manager swears it’s not his intention: “I don’t wanna change absolutely anything. When I put a lot of people in the middle, it’s because I like to have a lot of people in the middle to pass the ball, to control the ball when we lose the ball. That’s the reason why.
“Sometimes it’s the wingers inside, sometimes the fullbacks, but it always depends on the quality of the players. Because I try the fullbacks inside, but not all the time. I did it once or twice, I think. Because I’ve got to understand the quality of the fullbacks to go inside and they have to know they have quality play inside.”
Speaking about how spontaneous or not his choices are, the manager claimed it’s a mix of situations and his preferences from his old days as a manager: “My philosophy depends on the quality of the players. So when I play in that way, it’s because I have these players. What I like, I like to attack small places and defend as big spaces.
“So normally people defend in small spaces and attack in big spaces for the counter-attacks. So what I did from the beginning at the second team of Barcelona, after four years at Barcelona’s first team, three years in Bayern Munich is to try to attack in small places.”
It seems pretty clear Guardiola is completely mentally tuned into his task at Manchester City, probably more so after the Leicester match.
Far be it from us to give advice to such a great manager, but perhaps he needs a break. A few hours around Heaton Park, without football in his head, he’s starting to sound like his job is eating him alive.
