Manchester City brought Pep Guardiola in to win the Champions League and he has failed miserably
SunSport's Chief Football Reporter says the Spaniard can't palm off Liverpool's triumph as he had huge resources
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PULL the other one, Pep.
Prioritising the Premier League, attempting to palm off a Champions League exit as just one of those things, does not wash.
Manchester City boss Guardiola, who led Barcelona to European glory in 2009 and 2011, was brought in to bring the biggest prize in club football to the Etihad.
So far, he has failed. Miserably.
City wanted Pep the Purist when they finally convinced him to leave Bayern Munich for the unlimited resources on offer under City’s Abu Dhabi owners.
In return, the club were supposed to dominate the European scene.
Instead, they now have an unpredictable, whimsical head coach.
The man who axed Raheem Sterling, who was on a hot streak, from the City starting XI cuffed 3-0 by Liverpool at Anfield in the first leg of their last-eight tie.
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The man who washed agent Mino Raiola’s dirty underpants in public just 24 hours before City blew the chance to win the Premier League against rivals Manchester United — by claiming he had been offered Paul Pogba in January.
The man who was sent off at half-time for losing his temper with Spanish referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz when City were leading Liverpool 1-0 on Tuesday.
Those seven days in City’s distorted and demanding world needed nerves of steel, emotional control and clear, coherent thinking.
But Guardiola’s decision-making was mixed-up and muddled.
City’s owners — speeding towards a £1billion outlay on Project Pep — certainly do not expect to lose a Champions League quarter-final to Liverpool 5-1 on aggregate.
The much-maligned Manuel Pellegrini is the only manager in City’s history to get the club as far as a Champions League semi-final.
They lost 1-0 to Real Madrid over two legs in 2016, beaten at the Bernabeu when Fernando scored an own goal.
Pep practically played rush goalie in last season’s disastrous last-16 exit to Monaco.
He also started six forwards against Liverpool at the Etihad on Tuesday and has still not come close to matching Pellegrini.
The arch-strategist, this calculating mind — the man who came to reshape English football — was supposed to be decisive at the very highest level of the sport.
City were already putting threes, fours and fives past the also-rans in the Premier League long before Guardiola was given the job.
Pep was Sheikh Mansour’s insurance policy at elite level.
Well, the premium just shot up. City already know what it takes to win Premier League titles, with Roberto Mancini landing the first in 2012 (89 points) and Pellegrini adding another two years later (86).
Pep is regarded as an upgrade on both.
This chess player, the great friend of grandmaster Garry Kasparov, was always two steps ahead of the opposition when he worked with Barca’s players at their Joan Gamper training centre.
But the defeat to Liverpool revived memories of Kasparov’s advice after Pep’s Bayern were battered 4-0 by Real Madrid in the second leg of their 2014 Champions League semi-final.
Kasparov had pleaded: “Remember, Pep, you don’t win games just because you’ve moved all your pieces to the front.”
Guardiola, to his cost, forgot that wise warning.
City — starting Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne, Leroy Sane, Bernardo Silva, David Silva and Gabriel Jesus against Liverpool — ran out of ideas in the second half.
Their defence creaked, with goalkeeper Ederson conceding eight goals in three games after Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino won it for the red men on Tuesday.
No matter how much money is spent on central defenders — Aymeric Laporte, Nicolas Otamendi and John Stones — City still cannot seem to stop conceding soft goals.
The squad, Pep would have you believe, needs yet more surgery in the summer.
They cannot hope to finally win the Champions League, to bamboozle the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or even Liverpool by just playing fast and lose.
City are good — but they are not that good.
The reality is they believed they really did have a shot of winning the Champions League after building up a huge cushion in the Premier League title race.
It is the reason they wanted to sign Alexis Sanchez and Riyad Mahrez in January — desperate to add yet more attacking options to this ludicrously unbalanced squad.
It is a shame that it will all come down to money again this summer, because Guardiola arrived with a reputation for improving players beyond the capability of any other coach in the world.
These days, when he does not like the look of a player any more he disposes of them, discarding them for a pricier alternative.
When he gets to work, when his players buy into his complex training sessions, there is improvement.
Kyle Walker, City’s £180,000-a-week defender, loves working under Pep.
Sterling, who has had a superb season, is another.
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Soon enough, those two will get their hands on the Premier League title for the first time — two English players fully prepared to buy into Guardiola’s skittish ways.
It is a decent follow-up to the Carabao Cup, the first trophy Guardiola bagged in English football when they put away Arsenal 3-0 at Wembley in February.
They will have to settle for that — after losing in the FA Cup to League One Wigan — but City’s owners wanted to land the biggest trophy of all in European competition.
And two years into Project Pep, it is still a long way beyond them.