The Pep Guardiola effect at Manchester City and the cult of the Premier League manager

THE LATE TACKLE: The opening exchanges of this season are already proving the worth — and the failings — of the modern Premier League manager.

Life at Manchester City has begun in near perfect fashion for Pep Guardiola.

“PLAYERS lose you matches, not tactics. There’s so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes.” So said the late, great Brian Clough.

The former Nottingham Forest and Derby County boss was never reluctant with an opinion. But his dismissal of the role of the man with the clipboard/pro-zone-enabled iPad is perhaps disingenuous when considering his own impact from the dugout. Even more so when assessing the opening exchanges of this Premier League season, one in which the cult of the modern manager is beginning to make believers of even the most sceptical of agnostics.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Before a ball was kicked, and despite a dizzyingly extravagant transfer window in which 13 of the 20 clubs broke their own transfer record, it was the managers who commanded most column inches.

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Pep Guardiola’s arrival at Manchester City was cast in near biblical importance. Jose Mourinho taking residence across town, too, offered more subplots than a Scandinavian noir crime drama.

Elsewhere Antonio Conte was viewed as just the type of martinet Chelsea needed to undo the wreckage their last one wrought; Jurgen Klopp had a full off-season to forge a Liverpool team in his own gregarious image; while Ronald Koeman’s decision to leave upwardly mobile Southampton for a seemingly becalmed Everton raised eyebrows.

Elsewhere, Eddie Howe (Bournemouth), Slaven Bilic (West Ham), Mauricio Pochettino (Spurs) and, of course, Claudio Ranieri (Leicester City) all had impressive seasons to back up.

THE GUARDIOLA EFFECT

Five games in and already patterns are emerging. Guardiola’s City have been irrepressible. His tactical hand has been heavy, with the discombobulating sight of full-backs tucking in to midfield sending analysts in to meltdown. But more than that, his has been a self-fulfilling prophecy of a high vaulting reputation.

Antonio Conte has brought energy and menace to the Chelsea dugout.

New additions have been brought in but he has largely been working with the same raw materials as Manuel Pellegrini let drift into inertia. The Catalan’s intensity, more than anything, has galvanised an outrageously talented squad.

They are playing with purpose and with a clear direction — very public and visible in the case of John Stones, the beneficiary of mid-match lessons in the art of positional sense — that has allowed them to prosper. Guardiola has jolted the side in to champions-elect in a matter of months.

Conte, too, has benefited from inheriting a squad performing well below their station. A fitter, happier looking Chelsea (defeat to Liverpool notwithstanding) already look more like title challengers than the rabble that got Mourinho the sack. Once more the force of personality and the need for players to justify themselves to a new, uncompromising regime has instantly raised standards across the board.

LIVERPOOL THE ENTERTAINERS

That didn’t stop them being overrun by Klopp’s Liverpool, turning the heavy metal football up to 11 for periods at Stamford Bridge and The Emirates in a run that has seen them take seven points from last season’s top three. Inconsistent they may be, as defeat to Burnley testifies, but Klopp’s ‘Gegenpressing’ style, aided by the addition of pace to the attack in the form of Sadio Mane, has breathed life in to a Liverpool team crying out for some progressive guidance.

Jurgen Klopp is delivering on his promise of ‘heavy-metal football’ at Anfield.

Across Stanley Park, Roberto Martinez’s reputation, already hit by a poor season that earned him the sack, has been further trashed by his former club’s start to this campaign.

Koeman, like Guardiola and Conte, took over a squad better than their recent form, and, through attention to the basics of fitness and team shape, has already seen returns. Four wins from five matches sees Everton second in the nascent league table. Few imagine they will hold such a lofty perch come May but Ross Barkley and Romelu Lukaku suddenly look world beaters after treading water for a season.

THE LEGACY OF OTHERS

The impact of the manager is also arguably being felt at Stoke and West Ham, in a less positive sense.

Mark Hughes deserves praise for his efforts to develop Stoke from the archetypal spoilers so effectively constructed by his predecessor, Tony Pulis. Flare and creativity has been co-opted in to the side and great things were expected this season.

A single point and a negative goal difference in double figures has dashed those expectations and suggested that Hughes may very well have been the temporary beneficiary of Pulis’ legacy, the defensive habits he drilled in to his charges having simply taken a couple of seasons to dissipate.

Mark Hughes’s Stoke City sit at the bottom of the Premier League table.

A similar argument can be proffered for Martinez’s buoyant first season post-David Moyes at Everton. And we have seen how that ended.

The circumstances are more complicated at West Ham, where last season’s stellar performance has given way to one of perplexing regression. The emotional disturbance of leaving the Boleyn Ground for the London Stadium may be playing a part. But so too might the distance between Sam Allardyce’s defensive competence and Bilic’s more attractive but less robust style of coaching.

HAS MOURINHO LOST HIS TOUCH?

The most intriguing of managerial impacts, however, is found back in Manchester, where the success some thought guaranteed by Mourinho’s appointment appears to be anything but, for now at least. Three defeats in a week is more Moyes than Mou, but that is what United have endured, including embarrassment in Europe and a chastening defeat to a demonstrably superior Manchester City.

Mourinho was afforded great largesse in the transfer market, breaking the world record fee in recruiting Paul Pogba, but seems unsure how to best balance his starting eleven, despite promising signs in their opening matches. Mourinho persists in picking Wayne Rooney, a virtual passenger in the last three games he has — notionally at least — taken part in, shunting Pogba to a less effective part of the pitch in the process.

Pep Guardiola is viewed as the brightest coach of his generation.

The decisiveness and uncompromising nature of his previous incarnations as a club boss appear to have in some degree deserted him, his touchline swagger oddly absent. It is something that needs to be rediscovered if United are to stay in a title race they have already given their city rivals a six point start in.

Clough, of course, would never have succumbed to such evident self-doubt when handed the big job he craved, just ask fans of Leeds United, though his short lived stay at Elland Road is a cautionary tale in the limits of managerial ego.

‘Old Big Head’ was right: players, ultimately, still shoulder the responsibility to actually go out and win matches. Guardiola appears to have best inspired his in the opening weeks of this campaign, but he is far from alone in clearly and successfully defining a team from the sidelines.

Originally published as The Pep Guardiola effect at Manchester City and the cult of the Premier League manager