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It may not be today, tomorrow, or next week, but make sure it gets closer. Soon, Pep Guardiola will have to make a firm decision about his future at Manchester City.
The decision is his and his alone. City would gladly allow Guardiola, the most decorated manager in its history, to stay beyond the next eight months. Obviously they would. But the autonomy it gives it makes this situation, which continues to bubble, delicate.
Guardiola said his contract will not affect performances, but some team members have wondered who they will play with next season. The clocks have turned back, winter is approaching, and no one at the City Football Academy offices knows if Guardiola will be in charge next summer.
If he does not plan to stay, and no one would blame the Catalan for that after five years in an enormously demanding job, then the club must go ahead with the selection of a successor.
Actually, only two men come to mind. Mauricio Pochettino, a name that has been around since he was fired by Tottenham. And Julian Nagelsmann, 33, of RB Leipzig, whose reputation is on the rise and is at Old Trafford in the Champions League on Wednesday. City like the look of both. It will not be the only club in Europe to do so.
Timing could therefore be of the essence, even if City are just five games away in this Premier League season that has started shaky. In fact, it’s his worst start since 2014.
There is a mitigation: a list of injuries that he refuses to shorten after there is no preseason preparation and three games a week.
Sergio Aguero’s hamstring problem at West Ham is a good example that the Argentine is fatigued from starting the previous two games after recovering from a knee injury suffered in June. He will have more tests on Monday.
Even when on the field, City was busy attacking. “We have to have the right movements, we are fighting for this,” Guardiola said. “We don’t play badly.” They certainly didn’t play well either.
It is interesting that Guardiola points out the movements, because you can imagine that it is based on instinct rather than physical form and rhythm. Interestingly, despite scoring 102 goals last year, they also struggled to create chances.
Another quirk was that Guardiola named a team unchanged for the first time since October 2017 at a time when his team is exhausted, but Phil Foden said: ‘We are not a sulking team. We will get over it tomorrow.
Foden, who came in for Agüero, was excellent, scoring the equalizer and offering additional energy and imagination.
But this was another good result for West Ham and for a while it seemed that Michail Antonio’s spectacular early aerial volley could bring more than one point reward.
Coach David Moyes felt the team was “going in the right direction” and praised Antonio, saying: “All good teams need a good center forward and we have a good center forward at the moment.”
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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