“Without the ball, we are a disastrous team, a horrible team, so we need the ball,” said Pep Guardiola.
Not on Tuesday, though, nor after Saturday’s 4-2 defeat at Leicester City. Rather that admission came in the wake of a famous victory in the 2009 Uefa Champions League final.
Now his methods are under the microscope again, but for different reasons. Manchester City’s evisceration by a Leicester side they contrived to make look like last season’s champions was compounded by Guardiola’s post-match comments.
“I’m not a coach for the tackles,” he said after a 4-2 defeat. “What’s tackles?” Cue predictable outrage in England, particularly from no-nonsense defenders from earlier eras.
What he was doing was shining a light on a different belief system. Guardiola’s City side are not on a par with that gilded Barcelona group, just as Guardiola argues his methods are evolving.
But certain principles are sacrosanct and he displayed a defiance on Tuesday that his team would do well to replicate when Watford visit the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday.
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“Of course I have to adapt, but that doesn’t mean I change the way I believe,” he said. “I believe in the way I like to play, I am sorry. If I cannot do that, the chairman will decide. But there’s no way I will change.”
He reiterated a determination not to rip up an approach that produced 21 trophies in his previous seven seasons of management.
“No way,” he said. “We are going to play the way I feel. I cannot do something I don’t feel.”
The commitment to passing the ball out from the back remains. So do other common denominators in his management. Keeping possession is one.
“They get you on that carousel and they make you dizzy with their passing,” said Alex Ferguson, the beaten manager in that 2009 final.
City have had the ball for 61.2 per cent of time of their league matches, the most in the division, though significantly down on Barcelona’s 67.4 per cent share in the Primera Liga in 2010/11 or Bayern Munich’s 66.4 per cent ratio in last season’s Bundesliga.
Guardiola believes in defending with the ball and regaining it quickly and high up the field, with a pressing game.
The issues are more when the press is beaten. City have been counter-attacked by Chelsea and Leicester in their last two games, conceding seven goals. One problem Guardiola has identified may have more pertinence in the Premier League than its Spanish or German counterparts.
“Here you have to control the second ball,” he said. “Without that you cannot survive. We were able to do it earlier in the season.”
Getting to the loose ball more often may stop counter-attacks at source. Free kicks and corners provide further issues for a club without their tallest defender, the injured Vincent Kompany, and in a league where dead-ball situations assume an importance.
“Watford are really good on set-pieces,” Guardiola said. “I saw Swansea against Crystal Palace. Nine goals. Eight set-pieces!”
Other strange statistics surround his side. They have let in 19 league goals already, more than his Bayern side did in either of the last two seasons. One diagnosis is that Guardiola has lesser defenders at City than he did at his previous clubs. At least Nicolas Otamendi is back from a ban against Watford to give him a second specialist senior centre-back as they look for just a third clean sheet in 16 league encounters.
Guardiola argued their difficulties relate to recent games. “The last month, we have to accept, it is not going well. I don’t have a defence for that,” he said.
It was an unfortunate choice of words at a time when critics have accused City of lacking a defence. But their manager was referring to results, rather than personnel or methods.
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