Manchester City: Surprise, surprise, Pep Guardiola was right

Last week the narrative was that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola made a mistake for fielding a younger side in the League Cup derby against United. Beating Barcelona, however, proves he was right.

If you’re a fan of Manchester City, and even if you aren’t, you’re probably just about done with reading about the clubs unexpected, though thoroughly deserved, demolition of Barcelona on Tuesday.

The out-pouring of appreciation and the endless dissection of where it went right for City and wrong for Blaugrana is understandable given it’s the first time the Blues have ever come out the better, let alone so emphatically. Pile on top that it marks 7 straight undefeated Champions League home games for City, a club record, and is the first time Barca have gone ahead, yet still lost, in the competition in a decade or more and you’ve got a lot to chat about.

Despite all this, what you probably haven’t heard the media talking about much is that they were wrong. How unusual. Yep, they were wrong about City and wrong about Guardiola and their silence on it is deafening. Assuming this was a mere oversight, allow me to remind BBC Sport, BT Sport, Sky and other pundits of the elephant in the room: Pep fielding a weakened side against United in the League Cup last week was the right decision.

“Only increased concerns about Guardiola”, the BBC had to say about his team selection and the ultimate 1-0 loss said team suffered. The fans bought into it wholesale. Unable to see beyond the length of October the 26^th and the stress of what so-and-so the United fan will have to say the next morning at work, hordes rose up to proclaim that, perhaps, Pep was indeed out of his depth after all.

This is a narrative the media have been eager to paint from day one. Suggesting that somehow the English Premier League is unique in world football and the old, hard rules of tiki taka emblazoned on Guardiola’s soul would flicker against the raging torrent of the physical contest here. The argument was seemingly put to bed when Manchester City went on to win their first 10 games on the trot, equalling a league record, but no sooner had the first defeat come in then the articles were already being fished out of the drafts section for publication.

Here’s the rub though: United won the game, but a week later it’s City who is winning the plaudits. With three games in a week, Guardiola simply couldn’t play his first team in all three or risk flunking them all. Which do you choose? The Premier League? The Champions League? The League Cup? The choice is obvious and that the opponent was United was, frankly, irrelevant.

Who now believes that progression in the League Cup has provided any respite for Jose Mourinho? Despite being 8^th, and sliding, in the League having assembled a team worth hundreds of millions of pounds in the Summer, will he be able to relax with some well-deserved room service caviar for a job well done? I doubt it.

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Your average United fan could care less about the trophy which usher “Mickey Mouse” into the football lexicon and you can be certain the club’s ownership isn’t getting more sleep.

Meanwhile, as we discussed, the press is singing the praises of a City side that switched on and closed the door on Barcelona as easily as they did West Brom a few days earlier. Top of the league, edging closer to qualification beyond the Champions’ League group stages, seeing breakout performances from players like Ilkay Gundogan and Nolito who combined cost less than half that of a crushingly disappointing Paul Pogba. City are riding high.

All this is happening, would you believe it, because Pep had a difficult decision to make but he made the right one. With the League looking set to be among the tightest in recent memory, the margin for error is wafer thin and all teams, City included, need to be prioritise to stay in the hunt. With that in mind, you can expect there to still be a number of difficult decisions yet to be made by Pep, just trust that next time, he’ll have made the right one.

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