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They felt football was out to get them – so Pep Guardiola turned on the Man City winning machine

Pep Guardiola, Erling Haaland and Kevin de Bruyne – Pep Guardiola turned on the Manchester City winning machine

It would be only natural to trace the turning point in Manchester City’s season back to that dramatic night at the Etihad Stadium on January 19, when an exasperated, emotionally charged Pep Guardiola peeled back the curtain to reveal his true feelings about a side he said he no longer recognised.

Guardiola had just watched City recover from two goals down against Tottenham to win 4-2 but he was not impressed.

In what veered between a desperate rallying call, unsparing rant and blunt warning, the City manager pulled no punches and, in the process, delivered a quote for the ages when branding his serial champions a “happy flowers team”.

City, Guardiola claimed, had lost their fire, guts, passion and desire. The fans, like the players and club, had fallen into a comfort zone and got complacent. Team-mates had stopped defending each other on the pitch, Guardiola dismayed that youngster Rico Lewis had to fend for himself while Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg kicked lumps out of him. Even Erling Haaland copped for it, City’s record-breaking 52-goal top scorer rebuked for not making more runs in behind.

“If we play in this way, Arsenal will destroy us,” Guardiola asserted. “If we don’t change, we are not going to win anything. I don’t recognise my team. I want to see my team.”

It is interesting to note now, as City toast a fifth Premier League title in six seasons after a startling four-month turnaround in which Arsenal were gradually beaten down to the point of submission, that Guardiola says he would not have unloaded in the way he did had they lost that game to Spurs for fear of it coming across as an excuse.

Pep Guardiola - Getty Images/Jan Kruger
Pep Guardiola - Getty Images/Jan Kruger

Victory gave him a firmer platform from which to speak, but did that address really have a transformative effect? In reality, the jolt Guardiola was desperately seeking would come in more unexpected and unwelcome circumstances 19 days later when a courier delivered legal papers to the Etihad from the Premier League detailing 115 alleged breaches of their financial regulations.

Coming only hours after a damaging 1-0 defeat at Tottenham, and a bruising few weeks on the pitch when they were still wrestling with the switch to a 3-2-4-1 system, the bombshell news was – on the face of it – a huge distraction and headache Guardiola could have done without, and had the potential to derail City’s campaign. Suddenly, it was open season again for City’s army of critics who have vilified the Abu Dhabi project as an exercise in sports washing and creative accounting — the asterisk club.

Yet Guardiola saw it differently; for him, this was an opportunity. From what at times had felt like a lonely fight trying to corral a squad being asked to push the envelope once again, suddenly the manager had a unifying cause to get everyone to pull behind – and was not going to pass up the chance to create the fiercest of siege mentalities.

The press conference that followed was pure theatre and some City staff, interestingly, have likened it to that moment at the Bernabeu in April 2011 when, with Barcelona’s war with Real Madrid at its most toxic on the eve of the first leg of their Champions League semi-final showdown, a defiant Guardiola hit back at Jose Mourinho with his calculated “the f------ boss, the big f------ chief” take down. When Guardiola got back to the team hotel that night, he was greeted by a massive ovation from the Barcelona players.

Guardiola was no less pugnacious or theatrical when he came out swinging in the media auditorium at City’s training ground on February 10, accusing their Premier League rivals of a witchhunt against the club and even citing Julius Caesar as he claimed they had already been “condemned” and “sentenced” by those out to get them. There was a kicker, too, for those hoping Guardiola might soon be given cause to quit City — and level the Premier League playing field.

“I am not moving from this seat. I can assure you that, more than ever, I want to stay,” he said, pointedly. “Sometimes I have doubts. Seven years already is a long time in any country. Now, I don’t want to move.”

‘How can you not want to fight for this man?’

In the dressing room, in the boardroom, in the offices and at home, executives, players, staff and fans lapped it up. “How can you not want to fight for this man?” said one senior City source.

The response has been extraordinary. Almost like a light switch being flicked, the focus changed, the concentration narrowed, the system clicked and this most battle-hardened of machines went into relentless mode while, off the pitch, a steely “business as normal” mantra was adopted.

Aston Villa were the first victims in an unbeaten run that now stretches to 23 matches in all competitions, Rodri scoring after just four minutes in that game to signal City had plenty of stomach for the fight, before leaders Arsenal were dispatched 3-1 at the Emirates in the next outing. For the first time since November, City were top, albeit on goal difference having played a game more than Arsenal, and another psychological blow dealt to Mikel Arteta’s side. The hunt was underway, like wolves circling their prey.

Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City celebrates with team mates after scoring - Getty Images/Matt McNulty
Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City celebrates with team mates after scoring - Getty Images/Matt McNulty

After a surprise draw at Nottingham Forest allowed Arsenal to reclaim pole position, the message circulated internally was that City would have to be flawless over the remainder of the campaign. They had won their final 14 league matches to clinch the title by a point from Liverpool on the final day of the 2018/19 season and the view was it was going to require something similar this time around. Privately, the players felt that steady application of pressure would unseat Arsenal.

Rodri hinted at as much publicly in the middle of last month when he said: “When you’ve done it before you have proved that you can do it again. If you’ve never done it, maybe you have doubts over whether you can. We’ve done it many years.”

The next day, Arsenal threw away a 2-0 lead at West Ham to draw for a second successive game, and there were more dropped points to follow, this time at home to Southampton. By the time Arteta’s fragile, faltering team pitched up at the Etihad, you could almost smell their fear as that devourer of defenders Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne went on a rampage. 4-1. The title race was as good as over.

Offal, heart, liver, fish – and lasagne

There can be no serious discussion of City’s latest conquest without special mention of Haaland, who has smashed the Premier League scoring record and will soon surely add the PFA Player of the Year crown to the FWA Footballer of the Year award already won.

At the end of a seven-part documentary series, 'Together: Champions Again', charting last season’s title win, City teased Haaland’s arrival. “Welcome to Manchester,” said the pilot as Haaland’s plane touched down before the closing scene saw the striker, in full kit, clapping those huge hands together as if to say: ‘Let’s go’.

Has Haaland surpassed expectations? Maybe other people’s but not his own, according to Guardiola, even if the player believes his success has been underpinned by the way City’s medical staff have “fixed” his body after muscle problems dogged him for two-and-a-years at Borussia Dortmund.

Guardiola says Haaland has received 24/7 attention but the Norwegian’s own meticulous approach to managing his body and mind bears similarities to Cristiano Ronaldo’s obsessive pursuit of perfection.

Erling Haaland scores against Manchester United - Reuters/Phil Noble
Erling Haaland scores against Manchester United - Reuters/Phil Noble

Haaland wears an Oura Ring device on his finger which measures his sleep quality, temperature trends, stress and heart rate and also orange tinted, blue light glasses in the hours before he goes to sleep because they block out high energy emitted from digital screens and natural light. His diet, which includes offal, heart, liver, fish and his dad Alfie’s lasagne and can see him consume up to 6,000 calories a day, is as carefully configured as a Guardiola training plan.

Still, it is almost easy to forget now how many questions Guardiola had to field about whether City had erred by selling Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko, two pillars of Arsenal’s title charge, to their rivals last summer. Or the risks Guardiola seemed to be taking by sanctioning Joao Cancelo’s loan move to Bayern Munich in January, leaving him – incredibly – without a left-back and yet somehow better, with Nathan Ake excelling as a left sided centre-half as Pep saw an opportunity where everyone else saw a problem.

But then sources point to how successfully City have absorbed the loss of key figures such as Vincent Kompany, David Silva and Sergio Aguero over the years and, last summer, departing captain Fernandinho, as examples of the squad’s enduring robustness and resilience and Guardiola’s extraordinary recycling powers. Signing England midfielder Kalvin Phillips for £45 million and not starting him in a single league match is a reminder of how the bar remains at City.

With Wednesday’s 4-0 demolition of Real Madrid in the Champions League representing the high mark of Guardiola’s reign, there is an unstoppable feel to the City juggernaut. Yet it really has not been all plane sailing and the way they have managed to navigate those bumps to get to this point where everything is beginning to crystallise will doubtless sweeten the success for Guardiola after all those working lunches in Musu, an exclusive Japanese restaurant in Manchester, planning and plotting in his head.

Of their many fine performances this season perhaps their demolition job on Real Madrid will go down as their greatest - Getty Images/Michael Regan
Of their many fine performances this season perhaps their demolition job on Real Madrid will go down as their greatest - Getty Images/Michael Regan

It was only in mid-January, after a 2-1 defeat at Manchester United when Haaland barely had a kick in the midst of an eight-game league run when City dropped 11 points, that questions were still being asked about the Norwegian’s involvement within the wider system. Three days before, following a 2-0 loss at Southampton in the Carabao Cup, that Guardiola rated as the worst of his tenure, Ilkay Gundogan had claimed “something’s off”.

“It was a lack of attitude, lack of confidence, lack of commitment you know,” the City captain said.

Can anybody stop City next season?

Despite a 2-1 defeat at home to Brentford in the final game before the hiatus for the World Cup and City’s tendency to excel before then in dramatic bursts rather than entire games, there had been no obvious hint of the issues or misgivings to come when Guardiola flew into Abu Dhabi on the weekend of November 19-20 with his wife Cristina Serra and children Marius and Valentina to put the finishing touches to a two-year contract extension.

His family had given him their blessing to extend his City stay during a short break in Scotland in the days after a 1-0 defeat by Liverpool the previous month and Guardiola was all smiles as he attended the Pro Am Pep Trophy, a golf event in his name, and later the Grand Prix at Yas Marina.

For a good six months, though, this season was about different players coming to the fore for short periods at different junctures and getting the team to a point where the system switch fully took shape. The likes of De Bruyne, Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, John Stones – now a roving midfield pivot of the highest class – Kyle Walker and Ruben Dias have hit extraordinary heights in recent months, but it is only Rodri – “imperial” according to Guardiola – Jack Grealish, Haaland, Ake and Manuel Akanji who have been models of consistency over the entire piece.

Guardiola, for example, credits 18-year-old full-back Lewis with playing a vital role in that transition as one of two midfield pivots over a testing winter, even though the teenager has started just two of the past 17 matches in all competitions. Riyad Mahrez, described as being “on holiday” by Guardiola prior to the World Cup break, was City’s brightest attacker over the Christmas and New Year period but has had to settle for a role from the bench in the biggest games.

Phil Foden scored six goals in his first nine league games but has played second fiddle to Grealish for much of the season. Walker had long spells when he appeared to have been frozen out, with Guardiola even raising doubts about the defender’s suitability in the new system as recently as six weeks ago, but the 32-year-old has since returned to the side and has arguably never played better.

Jack Grealish - Getty Images/Tom Flathers
Jack Grealish - Getty Images/Tom Flathers

No one sulks in this squad, at least not outwardly. There is individual and collective resilience. Look at how Foden, Mahrez, Julian Alvarez and Aymeric Laporte, none of whom started in the 1-1 draw away to Real, reacted to being parachuted back into the side at Everton four days later. They would walk into every other side in the league.

Guardiola had been fearful about how the World Cup in Qatar might impact his side come March and April, given that City had more representatives at the tournament than any club bar Barcelona, but he need not have worried.

City headed into the run-in free of injuries and with players in peak form and fitness and credit for that, in part, must go to the club’s sports science and medical teams, who left no stone unturned in ensuring the physical and psychological stresses of a first mid-season World Cup did not come back to haunt them later in the campaign.

The attention to detail was faultless. At one stage, there were conditioning, physiotherapy, psychological, medicine and nutrition experts from England and City, for example, sat around a boardroom table together at City’s training base assessing each player. Walker even sat in on one of his debriefs.

City continue to set the benchmark. The question is who, if anyone, can realistically stop them next season?