Crisis! CRISIS! Manchester City are in CRISIS!
They may be top of the league, so what? They are still in crisis.
So they played the kids and still only lost 1-0 to a near full-strength Manchester United side in midweek. So what? Still in crisis.
And now football oracle Paul Merson has waded in to offer his advice to Pep Guardiola on how to sort it out. (There is no word yet on Pep’s reaction to this but I think we can safely say he’s overwhelmed with relief and delight that someone of Merse’s stature in the game is finally offering him some help).
Except, it’s not really advice that Merse is offering. More just using his column in the Daily Star to point out that everything’s going crap, and question whether Guardiola is really any good at all, or just a snappily dressed passing fundamentalist who got lucky in Barcelona.
Merse tells Pep it’s “shocking” that he sent out the reserves to play against Manchester United in midweek:
“United vs City is one of the biggest derbies around. They’ve not won in five, and he plays a weakened team. It makes no sense. Does he think they’re winning the Champions League instead? Because they were a million miles behind Barcelona recently and face them again next week.”
And if they end the season trophy-less, Merse calls that “a disaster and a huge disappointment,” adding “after going out to get the best manager in the world” in his best snark voice.
He says the City players look “unhappy and confused” and reckons that they will soon revolt and tell Pep where to shove his ‘passing out from the back’ mantra.
Merse knows this because it’s exactly what he and his fellow Arsenal players did to Bruce Rioch.
“But Bruce refused to change and the fans started getting frustrated. Not long after we’d gone to him, he was sacked,” he told the guy who ghost writes his column writes.
(Picture credit: Dave Rogers/Allsprot UK)He finishes off with a few pointed digs at the Spaniard, presumably designed to convey that Merson thinks he is vastly over-rated.
“Guardiola only has himself to blame. He’s starting to realise how much tougher this league is…” he says.
“Now we’ll see if he really is the best manager in the world.”
It would of course be churlish at this point to note that Guardiola is widely revered as one of the best managers the game has ever seen: a man who created what is arguably the greatest club side in the history of football, and has a trophy haul that would keep Brasso in business for years, while Merson’s managerial experience consists of an underwhelming two-year spell at Walsall before he was sacked.
But as we said, it would be churlish to point that out. So we won’t.
You can catch up on the latest episode of JOE’s Football Friday Live right here…
