Manchester City: A cold and windy afternoon at Stoke

For some time now, the media has told us that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was unproven in a cold, windy afternoon at Stoke. Not any more.

There’s something about professional sports that brings out the, well, weird in people. Take baseball for example. Perfectly rational and otherwise normal human beings can believe, in all seriousness, in the existence of a rally fox or a century old curse by a shamed goat farmer. Thankfully football is a little less strange than that due to, by and large, the absence of Americans, but even then it has its moments.

One of the oddest prevailing theories, believed in earnest by many even within the inner echelons of the game, is that there’s something uniquely different about the English Premier League that make it a unique and perhaps unconquerable challenge for the best managers and players in the World. A windy and cold afternoon at Stoke, they said, that’ll put that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola in his place.

The example of Stoke City rather than say, Bournemouth or the like, is not lost on most. City have made something of a boogie team, there’s that superstition again, out of Stoke having managed to win only once in their previous eight encounters at the Britannia.

None the less, the point is that a manager born from the fires of Barcelona and tempered in Bayern Munich like Pep, would find his free-flowing “tiki taka” football completely shut down by a wall of physicality at the hands of Stoke.

Stoke, they thought, would park the bus and completely close off any Manchester City advancements, rendering their passing and possession worthless. Such a game plan was employed, to success, by Burnley when playing Liverpool on Saturday also. Even so, it wasn’t to be in this case. Many may argue that the score-line, 4-1 in the end, somewhat flattered City, but few can dispute that the Blues deserved wholeheartedly to take the three points.

Ultimately, 4-1 is a convincing result. Two goals to Sergio Aguero in the first half, two to Nolito in the second half, fitting very much the mould of what one would expect to see in a rather lopsided matchup. All that talk of a cold day at Stoke was wrong, but why when it has shown itself to be accurate in many ways, such as with Liverpool’s struggles at Burnley?

More from Playing for 90

The first issue is the expectation that because Pep hasn’t played a “Stoke” before, then he won’t know how to do it. This doesn’t actually make any sense as an argument whatsoever as, discounting the fact he has plenty of Manchester City advisors surrounding him, Pep always spends a considerable time watching games of his opponents before each encounter. Knowing how players will move, teams will align and counterattacks made to his style will be formulated, is one of his biggest strengths.

Further, a one-dimensional team with little variety or depth in the squad throws a game plan at the wall repeatedly in the hopes it will stick. When things started to grind down, following Stoke’s goal in the second half, Pep brought on Nolito and Kelechi Iheanacho who reinvigorated the team with a fresh and effective approach.