Tag: Football

Pep Guardiola: The Game-Changer

Pep Guardiola: The Game-Changer

Pep Guardiola’s arrival in England was surrounded by expectation and hyperbole from both rivals and supporters of Manchester City. Weighed down by an enviable record of success and a ready-made list of issues for detractors. For every achievement, a negative take. For every possibility, a reason why it couldn’t work. Not with the style of the Premier League. Not with the way we do things in this country.

It’s easy to forget now how the naysayers swelled in numbers by the end of his first season at City. Some of the most vocal wore sky blue and became ever more nostalgic for more recent managers. There was a vibe that Bobby Manc got City in a way Pep couldn’t. He was too stubborn. His brand of football couldn’t work in the Premier League. Third place and some telling defeats. Replacing the much-loved Joe Hart with Claudio Bravo because the new ‘keeper could play out from the back. Unfortunately, he spent too much time retrieving the ball from the back of his net. Hart had been offered to stay on, develop, but knew the writing was on the wall.

What no one appreciated – and it was demonstrated many times with multiple players – it takes time for people to adapt to Pep’s method. To understand what he needs. To implement the change and grow into it. Season one was not a mini-failure, it was an excavation. Discovering the elements that he could use for the new football he was bringing.

Any style of football can be called out in a reductive fashion. To say City played with a high line and were always vulnerable, that playing out from the back was risky and boring, is an oversimplification. It misses the minutiae that goes on to make Treble Winners, Centurions, Four-in-a-Row Titles, and twenty trophies in ten years. 

But people can be forgiven for losing faith and after the first year in the Premier League, the voices claiming his style wouldn’t work in England started to sound more plausible. Or at the very least, they may have had a point. What those people didn’t appreciate was the Guardiola process. His method. The immediate understanding and absorption of information, the meticulous attention to all possible solutions, the never-ending crafting of the final product. It takes players time to get on Pep’s wavelength.

Notably more players left the Etihad in his first season than were recruited. Of those, only John Stones and İlkay Gündogan had notable sustained careers. Both became better players under Pep’s instruction.

The second season was a concentrated net spend of £200M. Ederson erased the Bravo blot on Pep’s record. Benjamin Mendy and Kyle Walker solved the full back issue. The now irreplaceable Bernardo Silva joined Mendy from Monaco (thankfully, he didn’t join him at parties) and the students from the previous season saw all the pieces fall into place.

How do you silence the naysayers from twelve months previous?

Become The Centurions.

Suddenly no one was mocking about being “tippy tappy”. It wasn’t boring. 100 points in a single season can never be understated. Nor can 106 league goals. It was proof that Guardiola’s philosophy could work on these shores. And with it, a seed was planted. Where there was once doubt, there were open minds.

As the (full) saying goes: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.

Slowly at first – then so quickly teams from League Two to Sunday League were trying it – everyone was trying to play from the back. High defensive lines were okay. Goalkeepers, even Dave from the Dog and Duck, were being turned into ball playing sweeper-keepers. With varying degrees of success.

The greatest teams of all time never exist in isolation. To raise levels, you need a worthy opponent. Someone who appears relentless in their pursuit as you stand on top of the mountain. One iteration of Pep’s City teams is the best Premier League side of all time. The debate is which team from which season. This wouldn’t be the case without Klopp’s Liverpool.

The Merseyside club under the German raised the bar higher than had been seen before in England. Jürgen’s Heavy Metal Football was seen as the antidote to Pep’s patient possession. They hit 97 points in the 2018-19 season. Good enough to win the league any normal year.

Except, Liverpool were up against a team that was anything but ordinary. City won the final fourteen league games, finishing on 98 points. It revealed the resilience and ruthlessness that was installed into the club’s DNA. This became the new Typical City.

Not before a reset was required.

In his first three seasons, Pep could be seen as a Missionary for his style of play. The Centurions and the run-in with Liverpool delivered his gospel. What followed were the years where he became a true controller. His previous managerial stints had been short in nature. After finishing a point above Liverpool, he surrendered the title to Klopp the following year.

It was a true transitional phase. Not just the loss of Vincent Kompany – immortalised forever, signing off with the goal against Leicester the previous season – but David Silva’s last year in a City shirt. Cancelo was recruited and so was a player called Rodri.

It was the year Covid changed the world and football didn’t escape. One where the sharp focus on City in the Champions League was harsher than ever. If you can’t fairly criticise what Guardiola has achieved, the only avenue left is to remind everyone what he hasn’t done. The defeat to Lyon – a Champions League game played over one leg because of Covid – drove the new narrative: he’s too clever for his own good.

But equally, because of the league performance, not that clever because he’d been worked out. This time, his style wouldn’t work in England. Yeah, yeah, people jumped the gun after the first season and called it too early. Then there was The Centurions and pipping Liverpool. But this time, really, no doubts: Pep was cooked and out of his depth. 

So he went on to win four Premier League titles in a row. An accomplishment never seen before in England.

Transition became a state of permanent flux. If anyone thought they could solve Pep, he was already dreaming up the next system. He’s playing 4D chess while everyone else is learning tic-tac-toe.

Managers who thought they knew City patterns were faced with a colder machine. When it looked like City desperately required a striker, Pep won the league with a false 9. People spending time working out that conundrum looked up to see the most un-Pep player in Erling Haaland sign with the club. Suddenly, City are more direct.

The Missionary became The Great Adapter. 

He picked up a domestic treble in the process — first English club to do so. The Holy Grail of the Champions League was secured — as part of a Premier League and FA Cup treble. It makes City the only English side to win the Continental Treble (Premier League, FA Cup, and European Cup) as the reigning champions of England. A FIFA Club World Cup, a Super Cup, what felt like an annual League Cup. The trophies became synonymous with the pairing of Pep and City.

Kevin De Bruyne became arguably the best in the world as he peaked. Rodri recognised as such when he won the Ballon d’Or.

Those who said Pep’s football was boring when he arrived, were now just bored of watching him dominate English football.

When it’s hard to argue with the results, detractors have turned to the low-hanging fruit. The most obvious being the financial spend, which neatly leads them to the 115 charges. The Covid season saw City initially found guilty by UEFA and subsequently cleared by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Yes, there’s no doubt Pep has spent money when required.

It didn’t seem such a sin when Alex Ferguson signed Rio Ferdinand for £29.1M in 2002. Adjusted using CPI, that’s about £61.5M – but – football stands outside of regular inflation. The TV deal for the Premier League during that cycle was £1BN over three seasons. The clubs currently share a £6.7BN pot. Marc-Israel Guéhi seems like a real bargain.

Buying the league was romanticised when Jack Walker did it for Blackburn Rovers. The Eighties saw the decade start with Robson going to United for £1.5M and surging to £2.8M when Liverpool re-signed Ian Rush. Chris Waddle was sold to Marseille for £4.25M in 1989.

Going all the way back to 1905, Alf Common was signed for £1,000 — the first four-figure transfer fee. Aptly named because spending money in football has always been common. The results do vary wildly.

In the last five years, Manchester United’s net spend of £684.61M is the highest in the Premier League. Newly crowned champions Arsenal are second with £675.77M. Man City are down in seventh with £397.78M.

You need money for success, but money doesn’t guarantee success.

This is why the mudslinging isn’t reserved just for Pep’s transfer activity. The outstanding 115+ charges remain the default position for all detractors. Never have so many people been experts on a topic they’ve no insight into or sound understanding of. Regardless of the outcome, the club – and managers and players by association – will never be given due credit.

None of the negativity can change the argument about Guardiola’s influence. Children are now trained differently because of his arrival. Every level of the football pyramid has altered its play style because of one man’s vision and application. In his leaving statement, Pep spoke more elegantly and poetically than anything this writer can create for such a great man.

He gets Manchester and Manchester loves him. And his truth sits in plain sight when he speaks about the area. Mentioning the Industrial Revolution, and a city built from graft, it becomes the perfect summary for his time at the club. He has spearheaded a football revolution. It required hard work. The result is like the colour of the bricks he mentions — imperfect but resilient. Everything is the product of a massive progression forward. The results not always pretty but authentic and worthwhile.

He changed how a country views its national sport.

Guardiola arrived as a football missionary. He leaves a man changed by England, but not nearly as much as England was changed by him.

Manchester City Ticket Sham

Manchester City Ticket Sham

One week, two Manchester City FC ticket issues. There aren’t complaints about the on-field management, the overall direction the club is heading, or the proposals for the future. But it isn’t news to anyone that there’s currently a cost-of-living crisis and the club has come across tone deaf in recent weeks.

The two issues are rooted in the same concern. Season ticket prices were announced, bringing wholesale increases. At the same time, fans who weren’t in the Champions League cup scheme were left unable to purchase a ticket for the home match against Real Madrid. Breaking down the Madrid semi-final first, it’s clear the club wanted to shift the tickets reserved for those in the cup scheme, then open it to all and sundry.

This means the club didn’t take into consideration how many matches a person had attended prior to the semi-final. There was no sliding scale to recognise loyalty. A person can only be in the cup scheme if they are a season ticket holder. Not everybody can afford this or may have been on waiting lists. There should be a secondary cup scheme for those who aren’t season ticket holders. No one is arguing with the cup scheme getting first dibs, but if any remain after this period, they should be released on either points or cup games attended that season as the criteria.

The club didn’t employ the method they used for the home game against Bayern Munich because the Real Madrid game isn’t considered “high risk”. This could be for one of two reasons. First, the club can argue Real Madrid returned some of their allocation. Thus, this would indicate a reduction in potential flashpoints between opposing fans. The second reason is more sinister: it had nothing to do with fan safety. The club knew they could instantly sell out to tourist fans so bypassed the loyal working class.

This is shortsighted at best. If you force out the most loyal of fan, good luck trying to get a decent gate when playing Carlisle United in the Carabao Cup.

However, it would be naïve to think the club is shortsighted. The entire business model is the blueprint for how to run a modern day football empire. So it’s with fear, the club appears to be sending the message that the working class is surplus to requirement.

The Abu Dhabi investment has revitalised areas of Manchester far more effectively than any Tory government’s idea of “levelling up”. They may have enriched communities but the one area the fanbase judges them most harshly: ticket prices, will always overshadow these improvements.

Everyone will always – to a lesser or greater degree, depending on personal circumstances – bemoan an increase to their season ticket. It should have come as little surprise there were increases. Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, callously implied this week that workers should accept lower wage increases and accept they were going to be worse off.

This mindset hasn’t been extended to the 1% and big companies.

It has followed its way to the club’s thinking. There has been zero transparency or explanation for the seemingly arbitrary season ticket increases. There is a pattern though, and clear, desired outcome. The increases range from around 5%, to 8.3% to in excess of 10%. It seems those in the cheaper seats, often get hit with a disproportionate increase. Surely it would have been fairer to apply a set percentage increase across all season tickets.

So in a cost of living crisis, those with less, suffer more. At least the club is reflecting how society works. 

There is a growing feeling among fans that the business model is to squeeze out the local working class and bring in high spending tourists. In order to grow and continue to compete at the highest level, it’s understandable the club wants to exploit this revenue stream but it shouldn’t be to the detriment of loyal supporters.

The increase on tickets is negligible in terms of balancing the books for FFP. It’s all the extras tourist fans bring, like trips to the club shop, that make the difference. Many working class fans are counting the pennies when weighing up multiple trips to Wembley and Champions League matches at home. In the club’s defence, maybe they considered too many tickets would be sold on the secondary market so cut out the middleman? Or perhaps it is growing tired with fan conduct in certain areas of the ground during halftime and sees this as a way to restrict negative elements? We don’t know the rationale because nothing is openly communicated.

Only those at the club know if they want a genuine connection with its fanbase or if improvements to local communities really are the product of sportswashing like detractors would have you believe.

If feels like the club see this as a natural evolution. That over time, the stands will resemble Stamford Bridge more than Maine Road and only the wealthy are ensured seats to the big games.

But there’ll never take away those mouthwatering midweek League Cup games to lower league opposition. 

OKX: Manchester City’s Next Finance Scandal

OKX: Manchester City’s Next Finance Scandal

A lot has happened since this writer took to these pages. Manchester City FC has faced further Financial Fair Play charges, to which they will no doubt respond to as forcefully as the UEFA case. At this point, we shouldn’t lose sight that FFP itself is a corrupt, broken system. Created to keep new teams changing the old status quo. I make no apologies for stating this for the thousandth time: its proponents – or those who believe everything the agenda in the mainstream media prints – pivot away from this key point.

Manchester City’s biggest crime with FFP was trying to prove compliance within its ever-changing arbitrary rules instead of hiring lawyers to disassemble the system. FFP being removed entirely should have been the Bosman case for this generation.

With so much spotlight on Manchester City’s financial dealings, the club could do itself a few favours. A controversial area of finance is the crypto world. Often seen as the Wild West to the traditional banking system. In the United States, there is now a steady march forcing crypto companies into regulation. A catalyst for this has been the FTX scandal, and more recently, the collapse and bailout of SVB, a FinTech bank which held the real-world deposits for crypto firms. 

What the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would like to do is declare all cryptocurrencies (aside from Bitcoin, which doesn’t meet the criteria in the Howey test) a security. It should also be noted, all the concerns the SEC has surrounding crypto sounds like concern for the consumer, but the allegations about its harmful potential are nothing the traditional banking system hasn’t already done or continues to do on a daily basis. It’s about keeping control of your money.

Admittedly, the United Kingdom appears less concerned with this type of crypto clampdown, so Manchester City may feel less pressure to examine the practises of its key business partners. But they won’t be able to claim it completely blindsided them like the Mercedes F1 Team, who were quick to remove FTX sponsorship from their cars last season.

We’ve had several warnings recently that not all crypto exchanges can be trusted.

With all this fully established, Man City display OKX as one of its key sponsors. OKX’s signage is burnt into the grass at The Etihad Stadium. Its advert scrolls around the stands, claiming to be your new favourite exchange. Its logo features on every background as Pep and the players take interviews. There’s no doubt advertising works. Eventually, after months of seeing OKX on match days, I took the plunge and visited the exchange.

None of this is financial advice – let’s make that abundantly clear – in my opinion, while someone still has a mortgage, that’s a better place to put disposable income and pay it off sooner. The idea of putting money into a cryptocurrency, to me at least, is akin to putting money on a football accumulator.

At first, there wasn’t anything that grabbed this writer about OKX. But with the relentless exposure at The Etihad, I went back to the app. I appreciate this is all freewill, but as a City fan, I have a couple of simple rules regarding sponsorship: if a company has been the main shirt sponsor for Manchester United, I can’t use them ever again (which means my dream ride of a Chevrolet Matiz will forever elude me; if someone is associated with City, I give them first dibs. Which is why I buy all my fax machines from Brother.

OKX offers a high APY (the yield or return on your investment) in its Earn section. The stablecoin Tether USDT currently offers a 16% return. No savings account will get anywhere near this, and being a stablecoin it should – as the name suggest – avoid price fluctuations. They are supposed to be pegged to the associated fiat money. With Tether USDT, it’s the American dollar. These sometimes lose their peg, but that’s an article for a different day. So, converting British pounds to USDT should be no different than converting money before a holiday.

Every crypto exchange adds a degree of “slip” at the point of sale. All cryptocurrencies are volatile. In the thirty seconds it takes to process the payment, it may jump a percentage. If they say they don’t add it, they’re liars (OKX said they didn’t). You wouldn’t expect any slippage on a stablecoin. Only the movement of the dollar against pound sterling should affect the conversion.

Deciding that a little bit of savings in a stablecoin sounded too good to be true, I forgot the golden rule: if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And this is aside from the fact all crypto kept on an exchange – “stable” or otherwise – isn’t really yours, they’ve just written an IOU that the FCA can ’t retrieve. I placed a deposit into USDT, with the sole intention of using the Earn feature.

OKX were transparent with a 2% fee – this was the last time they were open and honest regarding the transaction. There was 6% of the money missing. It was clear to see, as the value of USDT was also displayed in pound sterling. After two lengthy (because of the amount of hold time) chats on the in-app customer service, they claimed the missing money was a charge by my card issuer.

The card issuer denied this and has previously – and to this day – displays all card fees on the transactions page. Going back to OKX, I worked out that the “missing” money was because OKX added a 6% slip to USDT. 6% would be high for something like Bitcoin, it’s ridiculous for a stablecoin. The next in-app agent I spoke to agreed, and admitted this was where the money had gone. That person was the last to acknowledge the obvious. They said the relevant team would email. This never happened.

I emailed them instead. At this point, I added Manchester City to the email thread. The club should know unsavoury practises of its business partners. It was only because GBP to USD is a clearer conversion the 6% was noticed. I was using the Lite version of the app, where the slip can be added to the less experienced user without detection. On the Trading version of OKX, this couldn’t have occurred so easily. There are undoubtedly hundreds (maybe thousands?) of City fans, using the Lite version in OKX, buying a coin like Ethereum for the first time, have no idea how much £20 is represented as a fraction of that coin, and OKX takes its 2% fee and 6% slip every time.

Neither the club nor OKX responded to the email.

This week, OKX issued the same copy and paste response – they added no slippage, the card issuer took the disputed amount. This is a blatant lie. In the Wild West of the crypto world, the last thing a club like Manchester City needs is to be associated with a company that lacks transparency with its financial operations.

OKX can’t be trusted, and Manchester City shouldn’t encourage – by agreeing to a sponsorship deal – its fanbase to trade on such an opaque platform. It’s not like investigators won’t be taking a keen interest in this relationship. In addition to the aforementioned sponsorship agreement, OKX made a $20M deal to become City’s training kit sponsor. In a sense, every fan who gets hoodwinked on the exchange platform is paying for this directly out of their own pockets.

Manchester City accepted the unfairness of FFP, it shouldn’t expose supporters to the whims of a dodgy crypto exchange.