There are clearly elements in English football who wanted nothing more than Pep Guardiola to struggle at Manchester City.
Throughout his illustrious career at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, we’ve been waiting for the slightest indication that the Catalan might be human after all.
And finally, despite such an impressive start to life in the Premier League, we received it when City started to slip up.
It remains to be seen whether the 46-year-old will steer them to a place in the top four, or whether he’ll deliver the Champions League or FA Cup in his first term in charge.
What is obvious, however, is that he isn’t getting the respect he deserves.
Granted, Pep has made some huge errors – he was finally forced to drop Claudio Bravo against West Ham, and Willy Caballero kept a clean sheet in his place while Joe Hart watched on from Serie A.
John Stones is starting to learn to hoof the ball too, as his technical style simply hasn’t been working.
One area where Guardiola must be raised, though, is in his work with young players.
The side he inherited from Manuel Pellegrini included the likes of Aleksandar Kolarov (31), Yaya Toure (33), and Pablo Zabaleta (32).
The 4-0 win at West Ham, on the other hand, was engineered by the brilliant trio of Raheem Sterling (22), Leroy Sane (21), and Gabriel Jesus (19).
It doesn’t give quite the satisfaction that say, Mauricio Pochettino or Jurgen Klopp can enjoy from bringing through academy products.
All three of these have been bought in, and in Sterling’s case, not even by Guardiola.
What many haven’t taken into account is that this is a manager who is clearly preparing for the future. That may explain why there are no quick fixes at City, but it should also buy him the time he needs to develop something long-term.
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