Pep Guardiola’s man management lays foundations for City success

Pep Guardiola has made an incredible impact in the early stages of his reign as Manchester City head coach. His side have won their first 10 games of the season across three competitions, with experts and fans alike already sensing that his team will be hard to stop in the fight for the Premier League title.

He has received a lot of credit for the way he has coached his charges to adopt his style, or ‘philosophy’, as modern football parlance would dictate we call it. A squad defined over the last two seasons by a turgidness which limited their creativity and stifled their ingenuity now look fast and inventive. This is because Guardiola is the best coach in the world and he has a phenomenal ability to communicate his ideas and beliefs.

What gains less attention, but is just as important as the technical side of his coaching, is his man management. Whether it be building up players who are suffering from low confidence, or bringing others into line, he has a knack for knowing what each situation requires.

The most obvious current example of a player being well managed by the Spaniard is Raheem Sterling. The young England man suffered a difficult start to life in Manchester, following his £44m transfer from Liverpool in the summer of 2015. Whilst he wasn’t as bad as his biggest detractors portrayed him to be, his first campaign in sky blue could best be described as underwhelming.

He then went to Euro 2016 and had a torrid time, becoming a national scapegoat for a team that disgraced themselves as they were eliminated by Iceland. He was plastered across the back pages of our tabloid newspapers for daring to pay for a bathroom for his mother – what a monster! – and his every move was mocked.

During the tournament, when the vilification was at it’s worst, Pep either made a call or sent a text message to the player, depending on which source you trust most, telling him that he knew was a good player and that, as long as Sterling worked for him, he would fight for him too. We have seen the rewards of this immediately. Sterling has made a flying start to the season and his doubters have scuttled back off into the woodwork.

What was perhaps most interesting was that when the player opened his goalscoring account for the season against Bournemouth, bagging two goals as City cruised to victory, Pep took the opportunity to state that that was not Sterling’s best performance. Psychologically, that might have been an understated masterstroke. As soon as the youngster turned his promising start to the campaign into something tangible, the boss was there to anchor his feet to the ground.

Another player being very publicly man managed is Yaya Touré. Opinions will differ on whether Guardiola is handling this situation well or not and there are valid points on each side, but what is not in question is the decisive way the boss has gone about his business. As a recap, Touré’s loud-mouthed agent Dimitri Seluk accused City of humiliating his client when the midfielder was left out of the Blues squad for the Champions League. Guardiola then demanded an apology from Yaya and his agent and was very clear that unless one is forthcoming, the Ivorian will not play for City again.

Thousands of column inches and online blogs have been dedicated to the subject of Touré and his incongruous agent and I’m not here to debate the rights and wrongs of it. What is unquestionable is that having a manager who is very clear and succinct in matters of discipline is a good thing. In the short-term, ego’s will be bruised and feelings will be hurt by the public addresses detailing issues that usually stay in the dressing room, but Guardiola’s reputation buys him the respect required to get away with it.

One must consider the long term impact of such public statements. In future, will any player that wants to build a career at City make public pronouncements of dismay, or allow their agent to do it on their behalf? It’s hard to imagine that happening when the consequences are now so clear. Consider also this summer, when the manager revealed that Samir Nasri was training alone until he was fit, because he had returned from the summer break overweight. With that in mind, how many players do you think will turn up for the start of next season carrying a few too many pounds? I’d wager it will be less than one.

When he first addressed his new public, Guardiola spoke of having to kick his players up the backside sometimes but also spoke about the importance of creating a team ethic. The two have gone hand-in-hand and have allowed the manager to lay the early foundations that the next three years will be built on.