Manchester City dropped their first points at Celtic on Wednesday, not bad going when the season began in mid-August and this is October. It had to happen sometime, though Pep Guardiola claims he would rather drop points in the Premier League than in the Champions League, on the basis that the domestic competition offers more time and games to make amends.
So far City have won six out of six Premier League games and, while they may not have had the most strenuous of opening programmes, they have managed to take maximum points from visits to Stoke, Swansea and Manchester United, which is not a treble many teams are going to pull off, even if a couple of those sides have been below par so far.
Tottenham have not been below par. As Guardiola expected, they have continued to improve under Mauricio Pochettino, an old adversary from Barcelona-Espanyol derbies, and, if City can still claim a 100% record after Sunday’s visit to White Hart Lane, no one will be able to suggest it is due to a friendly quirk of the fixture computer.
The City manager admits to being surprised by his club’s flying start. “We are in a good way but it is not enough,” he says. “We need to carry on improving because the whole idea is to be a better team three years down the line than we are now. That is what happened at Bayern Munich and in my time at Barcelona before that. I’m not just talking about better results but an improvement you can notice in the way we play, the amount of control we have in matches.
“I am pleased with the start we have made but it is only a start. The results so far have been the result of the enthusiasm of the players. There are still areas to improve in terms of tactics and training and the players we might want to bring in for the future.”
What has Guardiola so far managed to change at City? The goalkeeper, most obviously, even if Claudio Bravo sometimes uses his feet when it would be easier and more sensible to use his hands, as if trying to prove a point. He has also encouraged more subtle flexibility, with Aleksandar Kolarov occasionally moving to centre-half, David Silva turning up in different parts of the pitch and Fernandinho, while notionally the defensive midfielder, does a bit of everything from dropping deep to supporting the attack.
“That is because Fernandinho can do everything,” Guardiola says. “What we have achieved so far would have been impossible without him. He is fast, he is intelligent, strong in the air and he can play in several positions. No sooner does he see a space than he runs there immediately. If you need someone to make a correction or a challenge, he sees it too. If a team had three Fernandinhos, they would be champions. We only have one and he is very important to us.”
Perhaps the biggest difference is that Guardiola has ditched the rather staid central midfield trio Manuel Pellegrini used to favour, in order to allow Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gündogan to form more attacking combinations with Silva further up the pitch.
De Bruyne is injured and perhaps was missed in Glasgow but, when all those creative players are available, with Fernandinho behind, Sergio Agüero up front and Raheem Sterling running between the lines, City have attacking ideas and options few sides in the league can match.
“I want to give my influence to my players, of course,” Guardiola says. “I want to convince them to play in a certain way, not just because I feel like it but because I see a need. I didn’t come here just to change things and I am not the sort of manager who keeps making interventions and ends up losing the game. When I make a decision, the players know the reason why.”
City’s record against the top teams last season was unimpressive, so their first encounter with a fellow Champions League participant this season will be keenly studied, though Guardiola is not one for building up the big matches. “The big teams are more difficult to play against because they have better players,” he says. “That’s how football works. I’ve told the players all along that it doesn’t matter if we play Tottenham or a Conference team, the points are the same. Every game brings its own complications, whatever the level of your opponents.”
If City have managed to make the Premier League look easy so far, does that imply English football is not as demanding as everyone says it is? “Not at all,” Guardiola says.
“It is so difficult. I have seen my players so exhausted in the dressing room after matches they could not speak. Before I came here I was told the Premier League was the toughest in the world, everyone can beat anyone. Now I accept it. It is not easy. I want to give credit to my players for the way they have worked.”
