da premier bet： For a team with arguably the most exciting and fresh-faced attack in England, Manchester City don’t half have an old guard.
da brwin： The rise of Leroy Sane and Gabriel Jesus alongside Raheem Sterling in a vibrant attack is juxtaposed jarringly with other elements of an ageing team. But it’s all part of a process that City needed to go through. The likes of Samir Nasri and Edin Dzeko were offloaded in favour of younger models, but players like Bacary Sagna, Aleksandar Kolarov and Yaya Toure remain in a team that still feels in need of a fresh impetus, especially at the back.
New ideas help. Pep Guardiola’s arrival has freshened things up in terms of squad personnel, but also in terms of the feel around the club. Yet when Pablo Zabaleta – another old head – talked about his manager’s approach to dealing with one of the important but tedious aspects of football management: video analysis, eyebrows were raised:
“We watch a lot of videos, and sometimes I know it’s a bit boring for some of the players to be watching videos every day, but for the players who really love football and enjoy watching… and I’m talking about 20 minutes of video, or 25 minutes, not an hour or two hours!”
Smelling a story, most headline writers jumped on the word boring, leading to reports about players being bored with Guardiola’s methods. That would be a far cry from the glowing praise his players heaped on him in the first few months of his tenure at the Etihad Stadium, but it’s probably unsurprising that video analysis would be boring for some players, just as shopping or cooking is boring for some, too. Saying the word out loud, though, is like waving a red cloth at a bull.
But the more interesting quip isn’t so much that some players can get bored with video sessions that last as long as an episode of The Simpsons. It’s more that some “players who really love football” don’t get bored. The implication is that those who do get bored don’t really love football.
Again, plenty of people go into their jobs day after day and don’t love it. The easy argument to make is that most people could love anything for millions of pounds a year, but footballers are just as entitled to have other interests to the same extent as any bank clerk, engineer or estate agent.
Yet Zabaleta’s comments are interesting for Guardiola’s effectiveness going forward. Just who are the players who love football and are willing to watch, and who are those who get bored? It’s no secret that the Catalan manager is a demanding figure whose systems tend to rely on the minute details of what players do and when they do them. As such, you’d think it would be the players who don’t get bored in the video room who will fit the best.
Perhaps it’s City’s old guard who are the more reticent to change. Some have left, while others like Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure have had to adapt in order to keep their playing time to a high level – both have done so admirably, especially Aguero – but you do get the feeling that Guardiola’s demands will be too great for some.
Clearly an overhaul is needed at Manchester City. This season, a title charge and progression in the Champions League have been thrown away by a porous defence in front of their home crowd. Individual errors in passing and technique have meant that this season’s aim will probably be lifting the FA Cup and getting as close to Chelsea as possible. But a few additions at the back could see Guardiola’s team push on to the next level.
It might take more fresh faces than old heads to make that jump, though.
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