10
THE VERDICT: PREMIER LEAGUE
As Sergio Aguero takes his penalty, Lukasz Fabianski looks to be off his line. But that’s not the issue...JACK
GAUGHAN
at the London
Stadium0
5
Gabriel Jesus 25
Sterling 51, 75, 90
Aguero 86 (pen)MAN CITY
WEST HAM
T
here will have been a
collective sigh of relief
inside the Manchester
City dressing room
when word got back
that Pep Guardiola was
going to be ‘nicer’ to his
players this season.
This time last year, Guardiola was
hammering the players to let go of
any lingering complacency
emanating from the record-break-
ing ‘Centurions’ campaign. The
year before that, he was hammer-
ing them to raise standards.
Now the dial is turning slightly,
seemingly with a desire to become
more relaxed and slightly
less intense behind the scenes.Guardiola is acutely aware of the
personality factor to management
and the need to retain relation-
ships with his best players. The
core of this squad have already
been with him for three years and
the Catalan is high-maintenance.
The demand to adhere to his
principles remains, but goes unsaid.
City’s main protagonists do not
need it ramming down their throat
as a constant motivational tool.
This brutal dispatching of West
ham — raheem Sterling scoring a
hat-trick, riyad Mahrez recapturing
his Leicester magic — was a
perfect response to Liverpool’s 4-1
victory against Norwich. A flawless
start, surely?
Well, apparently not. ‘The first 10
to 15 minutes was not really good,’
Guardiola said with a straight faceafter a 5-0 win. ‘It was not good. We
didn’t finish actions and were caught
on the counter-attack. Not good.
‘They know. It wasn’t necessary
to tell them, they know. Second
half was much, much better. But
that is normal for a first game.’
This was slightly off-message from
what he had planned coming into
the season. Guardiola wants to
accentuate the positives and focus
on improving aspects at which they
already excel. The City boss hopes
to be a more chilled presence,
although as Kevin De Bruyne and
Kyle Walker have found after ani-
mated in-game chats over the last
week, he will struggle to maintain
that in the heat of the battle.
It is at the training ground where
they will notice the change. It is
understood that there will not beany great emphasis on attempting
to teach individuals new tricks
because Guardiola’s belief is that,
after three years of coaching,
they’ve either got it by now or
they haven’t.
City will never be quite as faultless
as he wants. If that sounds stupid
for a team who have amassed
198 league points over two seasons,
that’s because it is. But this
is Guardiola.
This is a big year for him. Only his
friend Sir Alex Ferguson has lifted
three consecutive league titles in
english history. What company
that would be. And people wonder
why the Champions League is not
Guardiola’s main priority. These
league titles are legacy titles at a
club like City.
The debate surrounding how longplayers can keep responding to
Guardiola is another interesting
subplot to this year and one he has
thought about long and hard.
he left Barcelona after four years,
drained and desperate for a
sabbatical after political tensions
with the board. The players needed
new ideas and a new challenge,
finishing that season with just the
Copa Del rey. In Manchester,
he is free of constraint and has
dutiful disciples.
That Guardiola is trying different
managerial techniques with this
squad indicates he is prepared to
move with the times, and his team
seem to be responding. Mahrez, so
often surly last year, phoned the
manager to say he was only having
a 10-day holiday after lifting the
Africa Cup of Nations with Algeria.PEP’S Mr NICE
He’s chilling out to get best out of ch
SCINTILLATING CITY PUT ON A FIVE-STAR SHO
Fabianski saves Aguero’s tame penalty but can only push it back into the danger zone......it’s the fact that West Ham pair Declan Rice and Sebastien Ha...Rice clears the ball and becomes ‘active’. If he had not encr1 2
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