COMMENT: Pleeeaase, don't blame the players, Pepitas. That is, don't blame the quality Pep Guardiola had available for the trip to Leicester City.
Yeah, the Manchester City manager is getting it in the neck today, especially from the ex-players' brigade. But there's still the rider offered - that City's players just aren't good enough, both technically and cerebrally. They can't comprehend Yoda's fourth dimensional tactics. They're too thick to understand the genius of Pep.
C'mon. The same lot pedaling this nonsense were telling us all how amaaazzing it was that City's players had responded almost instantly to Guardiola's tactics as they shot clear at the top of the table. In John Stones, we were witnessing the emergence of the greatest English defender since Bobby Moore. Claudio Bravo would revolutionise goalkeeping in the country - and across the world - with his passing game. And Aleksander Kolarov was so good at centre-half, he looked like Beckenbauer in his pomp. Even Guardiola was at it, claiming he feared losing the Serb to Barcelona in January because he was playing so well.
So the idea that it was all a mirage, that this group of players simply aren't good enough, just doesn't wash. The plain truth is... Pep Guardiola has been found out.
He of the false 9. Of tiki-taka. The ball-playing keeper. Of no... TACKLES. He's been rumbled. You can do it at Barcelona, when you're midfield carries the names of Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta. You can do it at Bayern Munich, where every choice is supported by the cash power of Audi and adidas. But England? The Premier League? Na. This is no two team competition. Every week brings a new challenge. A different test. And after that opening salvo, opposition managers have now had the chance to break down Guardiola's game. And he's struggling to respond.
It took Jose Mourinho all of 45 minutes to show his peers how Guardiola could be undone. His Manchester United were played off the park for that first-half. The greatest performance in Premier League history, so the Pepitas claimed. It was like they'd left the ground at halftime, because Mourinho had City pegged for the remainder of the game. Bravo was targeted. As was the back three. Greater pressure on the ball. A higher press. And City were wobbling.
Fast-forward to Saturday and hat-trick hero Jamie Vardy crystallised the plans being discussed inside the offices of every manager in the country.
"We'd been watching videos and they like to use the keeper. Their keeper is a ball player so once you've got them in the corner you have to press the keeper slightly and luckily the ball came across and he wasn't ready for it," said Vardy.
"I think they've obviously got their set way of playing and how their manager wants them to play."
Unlike the LaLiga and Bundesliga, teams won't sit off Guardiola's keeper and back three, giving them all the time they wish to construct their next attack. It's helter-skelter. Dog-eat-dog. Leicester mugged City through poor individual errors. Chelsea turned them over by sheer brute force. Either way, they were games - experiences - Guardiola has never before confronted. The intensity. The physicality. A rain swept King Power was just the trip to see if Pep's ways could really withstand English football at it's most raw. And the champions gave us the answer.
If there's one symbol of the embryonic Guardiola era, it has to be Bravo. The manager arrived at City inheriting England's No1. He knew all about Joe Hart. He'd seen him in the flesh produce perhaps a career-best performance at the Nou Camp. Hart was in his prime. A legend with the club. A man, with captain Vincent Kompany still stuck in the medical room, the new manager could use to drive home his methods. Yet, he wasn't having him. Guardiola wanted Bravo. An inferior keeper to what he'd inherited. But who passed the ball better. A keeper who's physique simply had him ill-equipped for Premier League demands. But he could he pass the ball. A keeper who'd lost his first-choice status at Barca to Marc-Andre ter Stegen. But he passed the ball...
Peter Schmeichel, clearly irked, branded Guardiola a "very arrogant man" in the aftermath of the Leicester defeat. You can understand the Great Dane's frustration. Premier League titles are won with great goalkeepers. Unlike anyother competition in the world, the goalkeeper in England can be a match winner. Bravo has offered no evidence that he's worth any sort of points tally over a season - unless that's in the 'against' column. Given Premier League history, on current form, City will never win the title with Claudio Bravo between the posts.
For Guardiola, this is the greatest challenge of his career. Given the Premier League's global profile, his reputation and place in the game's history will be forged as City manager. There's no Messi to lean on (well, not at the moment) and no chequebook big enough to dismantle his nearest rivals, as Bayern have done to Borussia Dortmund.
This is the defining stage in his career. We'll now discover if there's more to Pep Guardiola than Spanish hype.
