Why Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola is more than just a chequebook manager

The fact that you can afford to purchase a Stradivarius is never going to guarantee your status as a violin virtuoso, although it certainly isn’t going to do you any harm.

In the pursuit of excellence in whatever pastime, profession or passion that lights your fire you always want to be blessed with the very best of raw materials that will assist you on your journey to the very top.

Which brings me to the subject of Pep Guardiola and one of the issues that has been discussed more often lately. Could Pep do what he has done at Manchester City without the financial resources he has behind him?

Putting aside for a minute the fact that it is a very stupid question, my answer is always the same. Could Lewis Hamilton have won the Formula One world title without the best team and the fastest car? Could Roger Federer have won the Australian Open playing with a wooden Dunlop Maxply racket?

Well of course not, because the quality of the resources you have available to do you – human or otherwise – are fundamental in your quest for success, although by no means a guarantee of it.

READ MORE: England’s World Cup 2018 kit revealed

READ MORE: Europe’s five biggest flops of the season

Or, put another way and to return briefly to my musical analogy, all the really great violinists will invariably own a Stradivarius, but not all Stradivarius owners will be great violinists. Ditto football, or more precisely, great footballers.

But what really intrigues me is why his ability to buy – or at least try to buy – the very best in order to achieve his aims is constantly used as a stick to beat him with; why the acid test for Guardiola should not be whether or not he can win, but rather whether or not he could win if he didn’t enjoy the massive financial backing that he does.

“With that amount of money behind them, I could win the league with Manchester City,” is the usual cry, to which the only response is, “No you couldn’t.”

Lessons from Barcelona

Tito Vilanova took over at Barcelona after Pep decided to leave the club. The cancer that would finally take his life meant that while he was undergoing treatment the team was effectively managing itself and the loss of form was tangible.

Football teams should no more be self-managing, than hospital patients should be self-medicating. What is needed is someone at the helm steering the ship, someone respected, trusted and capable and when that person leaves or loses any of the said attributes in the eyes of the team or is replaced by someone generally not perceived to possess them, titanic battles ensue and the iceberg spotted on the horizon looms ever closer.

The other absurd notion is that Pep “has only been so successful because he has been with top clubs” and it is spouted by those who fail to realise the idiocy of the statement. So near yet so far. To paraphrase the words of Eric Morecambe, “all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order,” because the reality is – “he has been with the top clubs BECAUSE he has been so successful”.

Pulling away from Manchester United

Guardiola may well have spent more money than anyone else, although when you look at certain wage agreements put in place with new arrivals at somewhere like Manchester United, the difference is not as big as some would have us believe. The difference is that his focus has been on target purchases as opposed to the panic buying displayed by some.

United and City finished the season before his arrival with the same amount of points and both have spent extensively since. But there is a points difference now that suggests City have done the rebuilding of the side better. And that is to be praised as Jose Mourinho is also one of the top managers in the world with an impressive CV.

As the old song says, “‘T’aint want you do, it’s the way that you do it” and Chelsea and Everton supporters, for example, should be the first to admit that these are two clubs that ‘ain’t’ done it very well this season.

Unlike some others who, with money burning a hole in their designer suit pockets, went on a spending spree, Guardiola, on the other hand, identified what was needed, told the powers that be who then promptly went out and bought them. More gourmet dining than frenzied feeding.

The main part of his shopping list this season has been for a goalkeeper (Ederson) , two wing backs (Benjamin Mendy and Kyle Walker), cover for them (Danilo), cover in central defence following injuries to John Stones and Vicent Kompany (Aymeric Laporte) and cover on the right hand side of midfield (Bernardo Silva). And the results are there for all to see.

Would he like to win titles with ten youngsters all products of the new and much vaunted Manchester City Academy? Of course he would. Could he? At the moment, not a cat in hells chance, and he knows it, just as much as he knows that the immediate need is to win more trophies.

But fear not, it will happen.

Transforming the Camp Nou

In his tenure at Barcelona, Guardiola won 15 trophies as coach. You will often see this reported as 14 because there are some that do not count the third division title he won when he was manager of Barcelona B. Not Guardiola I can assure you.

When Guardiola moved to the first team before the start of the 2008-09 season this was a Barcelona side whose last trophy had been the Spanish Super Cup (Spain’s version of the Community Shield) which they had won in August 2006.

READ MORE: Leicester to stop paying Mahrez

READ MORE: Where has it all gone wrong for Chelsea?

An organisation riddled with conspiracy, power struggles and dissent both on and off the pitch, a side that required root and branch surgery. By the 29th May 2009 at the end of his first season, Barcelona had the league, Copa del Rey and Champions League trophies under lock and key in the Camp Nou.

The raison d’etre to everything he does is to get the very best of what he has available to him and sometimes that has been scarce (Barcelona B) and other times plentiful (Manchester City). A combination of passion and hard working commitment practically bordering on the obsessive alongside an ability to turn good players into great ones, and great players into legends.

Stephen King, no slouch himself on that treadmill they call life and a man you sense could knock up a blockbuster best seller in between meals at his home in Maine could have been talking about Guardiola when he said: “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work”