When Pep Guardiola was announced as the next Manchester City manager, taking over from Manuel Pellegrini, many bemoaned the Spanish manager taking yet another easy job, backed with lots of money and great players.
Spending £174m on new players over the summer, the Premier League club were prepared to back their new superstar manager to the hilt, and so far, it’s kind of working, but not as smoothly as first thought.
Starting tremendously well, Manchester City have slipped up a few times over the past couple of months, yet still remain firmly in the title race, only one point behind league leaders Chelsea after 13 games.
Already 10 points ahead of his arch rival Mourinho, the Spaniard appears to be enjoying himself at his new club, but some saw the struggles coming, despite what the vast majority of predictions were saying at the start of the season.
One of these happened to be someone who knows the Manchester City manager very well, having spent a lot of time writing about him, Martí Perarnau, who was speaking to El Periodico de Aragon.
He said: “This is his challenge. Instead of staying at Bayern six or eight years, and winning leagues one after the other, when he saw he’d got the team to play like he wanted, he set himself a new challenge. In this case, it’s a lot harder because the club doesn’t have the history, nor the identity, nor the players.”
To say that Manchester City don’t have the players for Guardiola to gain instant success might be a bit far fetched considering the squad at his disposal.
Our guess is just that he’s in a more competitive league with more than just one team having similar resources to his.
