Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City are built to fight for and win trophies on multiple fronts.
In the past four seasons, the Blues lifted three Premier League titles, eight major honours overall and became the first team in history to win England’s domestic treble in 2018-19.
As such, Wednesday’s defeat on penalties at West Ham that denied City the chance of winning a fifth consecutive Carabao Cup will sting.
“I would have liked to continue in this competition because the results we achieved in the Premier League, Champions League and the FA Cup [show that] we are used to playing every three days, but congratulate West Ham for [reaching] the next round,” Guardiola told reporters ahead of Saturday’s return to league action at home to Patrick Vieira’s Crystal Palace.
“Our experience is not bad, we can handle playing a lot of games in many competitions. You cannot win all the time. It's part of the game in football, like in all the sports, winning is an exception. Normally you lose more than you win.”
Guardiola made nine changes for the West Ham game, although every single player was still an established professional and a full international, with the exception of breakout England Under-21 star Cole Palmer.
Keeping a happy camp
City played 61 of a possible 62 games in the 2020/21 season, their defeat to Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-finals preventing them from filling every spot on the calendar.
Despite having that level of competitive action, there were still a handful of players who were keen to leave the Etihad Stadium during the close season. Bernardo Silva, Aymeric Laporte and Gabriel Jesus - reported to be among the number of discontented stars - have enjoyed excellent starts to this season, but that just means the burden of discontent is likely to be felt elsewhere.
In that context, fewer games are not great news for Guardiola and he has an unenviable balancing act when it comes to trying to keep his stacked squad happy.
Nevertheless, before those obligations for diplomacy, Guardiola is a football coach and one of the finest ever to man the tactics board. As such, a couple of clear weeks here and there could provide a decisive opportunity.
“In terms of remembering or reintroducing something in training, after the international break we don’t have time,” Guardiola said back in August ahead of games against Norwich City and Arsenal, where his squad were in the unusual position of being free of midweek engagements.
“We are office men. You have more time on the computer than with the players on the pitch during the season.
“These three weeks are the only time we have to talk, to remember things that we are going to do. We have to see the team is growing in this period of time, it’s so important.”
Five-star City
If Pep was as good in the office as he is on the training field, then it would be time for everybody else to give up and Mark Zuckerberg to be worried.
Norwich were swept aside 5-0. A week later, Arsenal suffered an identical fate and City’s season had lift-off following a dispiriting opening weekend loss at Tottenham.
City know full well how much of a boost winning the first available trophy of the season can have. They have won the League Cup six times since 2014 and gone on to claim the Premier League title on four of those occasions.
That adrenaline shot could now propel Liverpool or Chelsea to top-flight glory at City’s expense, with both Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel’s sides through to the quarter-finals.
However, when those fixtures and the two-legged January semi-finals roll around, City will be able to fine-tune themselves under their manager’s expert eye for decisive moments in a title race that looks set to be nip and tuck for the duration.
“When we arrive in the weeks when other teams are going to play the Carabao Cup we are not going to play the Carabao Cup,” Guardiola added.
“We are going to prepare in the week for the next games. We will see, if the results are good, we can say it was nice to be out of the Carabao Cup. If [the results are] wrong, completely the opposite.”
Everything coming down to results was a familiar theme of Guardiola's Friday press conference as the respective fortunes of Ronald Koeman and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer were discussed.
But within the contrasting certainty of his ideal working environment in Manchester, it is hard to see a little bit of time to breathe and tweak with a squad that has played more or less non-stop since Project Restart last June being anything other than a good thing.
