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Your support makes all the difference.When asked to explain the chief difference between Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, who managed him at Borussia Dortmund, Ilkay Gundogan said the Manchester City manager was far less emotional.
On Wednesday night as Raheem Sterling’s beautiful, curled shot struck the back of Fraser Forster’s net with barely 20 seconds remaining, Gundogan saw at first hand just how emotional Guardiola can be.
He ran on to the pitch, had to be told by the referee to control himself and then at the finish he confronted the Southampton Fc winger, Nathan Redmond.
Guardiola’s explanation that he was telling the Southampton striker he was too good to resort to time wasting sounded like he was attempting to give free pitch-side coaching courses. The television pictures suggested his language was altogether more violent.
Guardiola was fortunate that Southampton were managed by Mauricio Pellegrino, who once shared a dressing room with him at Barcelona and claimed to have missed the confrontation. Someone like Sir Alex Ferguson might have grabbed Guardiola by the throat for talking to one of his players like that.
Guardiola does have a temper. His Barcelona players remember him shaking with anger when, as they had dinner in a Madrid hotel the night before a clasico, the television played Jose Mourinho’s press conference which had the Barcelona manager as its chief target.
Guardiola went up to his room in a cold fury to write a prepared statement about Mourinho, a man he had worked with for four years at the Nou Camp.
In February 2015, he twice confronted the referee, Bastian Dankert, as Schalke fought out a 1-1 draw with his Bayern Munich side at the Allianz Arena. The German Referee’s Association launched an official protest at his behaviour. It is worth pointing out that these were the first points Bayern had dropped at home under Guardiola. It was February and the season had become a coronation.
Like Ferguson, Guardiola has scant regard for teams that come only to frustrate. One of Ferguson’s worst dressing-room rages even his veterans can remember came in April 2006 when a Sunderland side doomed to relegation blocked out for a goalless draw at Old Trafford. Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney were the chief targets for the ‘Hairdryer’.
“We did not expect Southampton to defend for 90 minutes,” shrugged Gundogan afterwards. It would, however, have been suicide for a club with Southampton’s resources to have attempted to attack Manchester City and Pellegrino’s tactics came within one swing of Sterling’s boot of success.
Here and at Huddersfield on Sunday, Guardiola and his players had celebrated wildly. The sight of Benjamin Mendy, recovering from a cruciate ligament injury, sprinting down the touchline to hug Sterling had echoes of Mourinho’s slide down the side of the pitch as Porto knocked Manchester United out of the Champions League - or Ferguson’s leap in to Brian Kidd’s arms as Steve Bruce’s late, late winner put United in sight of their first Premier League title in 1993.
Had Sterling not struck late in successive matches, the lead over Mourinho would have been four points rather than eight. Lose the derby a week on Sunday and City might still not have broken away.
No Premier League team has got anywhere near Manchester City’s total after 14 games and not been champions. Newcastle in 1995 with 35 points from 14 games and Chelsea in 2008 with 33 failed to win the title. The nearest comparison would be Liverpool, who on December 3, 1990 went to Highbury with 38 points from 14 matches, lost 3-0 and cracked.
You could say George Graham, who won the championship, had the qualities of a Scottish Mourinho but there are no other comparisons. This was an ageing Liverpool side and Manchester City look young and hungry. Liverpool cracked because Kenny Dalglish cracked and Dalglish cracked because of Hillsborough, drowning in emotions that not even a man like Pep Guardiola could imagine.
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