Guardiola dismisses tactics talk as Cherki fires Manchester City past Forest
Pep Guardiola on Manchester City's match-winner Rayan Cherki: "there are moments I shout at him and there are moments I want to kiss him, so I have that ambivalent feeling with him.” Pic: Barrington Coombs/PA Wire.
For Pep Guardiola, Manchester City's resurgence into bona fide title contenders again has little to do with tactical tweaks. “That,” he said after Saturday’s gritty, determined win away to Nottingham Forest, “is all bull****.”
Instead the head coach puts his team’s bounceback from last season’s nosedive down to rediscovering their vitality.
“Energy, energy, energy,” he added. “We lost it last season.”
It was found somewhere in America during last summer’s Club World Cup, when a month of team bonding gave the existing, and exhausted, players a new lease of life that has been boosted further by signings capable of making instant impacts.
Rayan Cherki, a €36.5m acquisition from Lyon, was this weekend’s hero, scoring the late winner and providing the assist for Tijani Reijnders, another off-season addition from Milan, to strike the opener.
Cherki is beginning to dazzle having required some time to acclimatise to the Premier League and while Guardiola continues to be frustrated by some inconsistencies in the France attacker’s play, at the City Ground there was a desire “to allow him to express his incredible talent.”
By the end Guardiola was admitting "there are moments I shout at him and there are moments I want to kiss him, so I have that ambivalent feeling with him.”
There appeared no sense of ambivalence towards Pep Lijnders, the assistant coach, when Reijnders’ goal arrived from the type of tweak Guardiola was later playing down. Forest had done an admirable job of nullifying City during a feisty opening half, restricting them entirely to blocked shots from range.
But by moving Reijnders into a more advanced midfield role, the Dutchman was allowed to roam forward untracked to receive Cherki’s through ball. Guardiola immediately pointed emphatically at Lijnders in their technical area before embracing him with a big hug to let the world know who was behind the switch.
Forest fought back gamely, levelling through Omari Hutchinson, only for Cherki to slam home the winner after Josko Gvardiol knocked down Phil Foden’s deep corner. That prompted another change in shape as City dropped into a back five for the final minutes.
“It was a nightmare, a really tough game,” Guardiola reflected. “I was thinking in 75 minutes that if we draw or lose then congratulate Forest because the passion they play with is the Premier League.” It was a match that he felt they would have lost “ten [times] out of ten” last season but the perseverance, workrate and belief did not drop.
Which is why the most important ingredient of their return to form is energy. “It doesn’t mean you are going to win but that you are able to recognise the team,” he continued. “Now it is eight victories in a row. It is not easy to compete in the way we do. We have to improve, absolutely, but this mindset is better.
“After that we can talk about three at the back, four at the back, wingers or full backs – that is all bull****. We needed energy and then you have a good environment.
“Last season, how many times did you see me here judging and criticising the club? I could, I have big numbers in my career as a manager. How many? Never, ever. It’s not about you or you or you, it was something… something was in the fog in Manchester, surrounding our training centre. We missed something.”
Even in the darkest days of last season’s slump, when injuries and a packed schedule contributed to an ageing squad finishing 13 points adrift of Liverpool, he insists that he never lost faith in their verve returning.
“Energy can go down but energy can go up,” he said. “Never in our lives is it the same. In professional or personal, you’ll never be happy all the time but never sad all the time. You have to realise why, to realise what we missed, to come back. Everything in life… there is the sentence, right? This too shall pass.”
It did at their luxurious base in Boca Raton, Florida, though Guardiola was “pissed off” that they were knocked out by Al-Hilal in Fifa's new tournament.
“Everyone was happy,” he said, the sunshine and beach no doubt helping. “We made a lot of dinners, a lot of talks about what we have to do next season. We wanted to extend it, just to live that. I think there we turned around and said something changed, something [you can feel].”
Losing two of their opening three Premier League games can be merely put down to the new players needing a little time to settle.
“Still we were in that time [working out] how to play the players in the best way, what they are suited to. Sometimes you need time. Managers are not magicians, decide what we do, click your fingers and everything is clear. You have to discover the way they can play as a team.”
Even so, Guardiola is keen to stress that this all remains a work in progress. He has been praised for a willingness to mix things up more frequently than at any point in his career, altering the style for specific opponents, but some of it has been brought on by the personnel available to him.
The latest headache is an absence of wide players. Oscar Bobb and Jeremy Doku are sidelined by injury and Omar Marmoush is with Egypt at the Africa Cup of Nations.
“We only have one winger now, the other ones are injured," he said. We have to adapt the way. You have to realise for yourself as well. To say, ‘Oh it doesn’t work, we have to change a little bit.’
“It’s new players and the opponents always face us in different ways. Winning helps to advance this process.”
It is a process that should leave Arsenal feeling increasingly uncomfortable.
John Victor 6; Savona 6, Milenkovic 6, Murillo 6, Williams 6; Anderson 7, Dominguez 7 (Awoniyi 87); Hutchinson 7, Gibbs-White 7, Hudson-Odoi 6 (Bakwa 90); Igor Jesus 7. Subs: Sels, Morato, Luiz, Kalimuendo, McAtee, Zinchenko.
Donnarumma 6; Nunez 6, Dias 6, Gvardiol 6, O’Reilly 6; Reijnders 7 (Savinho 73), Gonzalez 6, Silva 6; Cherki 7 (Ake 89), Foden 6; Haaland 5. Subs: Trafford, Rodri, Khusanov, McAidoo, Mukasa, Lewis, Heskey.
R Jones 5.
30,778.
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