Saturday 6th February saw Pep’s four-game win streak grind to a 0-0 halt thanks to a tactically astute Bayer Leverkusen. This was just the third time Guardiola’s Munich dropped points this season, sitting as they do 8 points clear of rowdy Rurh dwellers Borussia Dortmund.
The future Manchester City manager had his priorities put in to question by journalists in the pre-match conference, an accusation Pep angrily rebutted by announcing: “I am like a woman, I can do two things at once,” before drawing in toothless fashion with their 6th placed hosts. Like a bitch.
Guardiola’s exasperation isn’t reserved solely for the German press: pitch side he often looks unstimulated, unfulfilled. So his announcement that he had entered into an open relationship by virtue of his newly attained Mancunian sidechick should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. Bayern are arguably so well adapted under Pep’s scientific method that they negate the very thing that drives evolution: competition.
Bayer Leverkusen’s hard won nil-nil with Bayern is significant in that it presents “another way” for those clubs who’ve been thus far obligingly flattened by the Bavarian bully boys. Roger Schmidt’s high pressing, highly physical tactics were so perfectly disruptive that Guardiola had to admit: “We’ve had a few problems passing the ball three, four, five times in a single move.” In the end Bayern could muster only a meagre one shot on target.
Schmidt’s gauntlet, though admirable, will inevitably prove little more than a brain-teaser for Guardiola; light tactical titillation while he sees out the rest of the season in the manner of a bedroom FM16 manager - endlessly pressing spacebar in a semi-comatosed and trouserless state.
Premier League teams would be forgiven for thinking the only true way to defeat Pep is the 'just keep your head down for three years, play dead and he’ll go away' approach. But that isn’t the English way. As Leicester City have shown us, Premiership sides would rather have a go "for the bants" than lie down: here the bottom can beat the top; the bottom can win the league.
Furthermore Guardiola will need to come to terms with the sheer volume of games. In an interview Pep's former adversary Jugern Klopp warned Guardiola would need 35 players to cope with the trials of Premiership life: “That’s the thing, it’s the number of games, football, football, football. With a perfect pre-season you are prepared for a long, long journey.” Said the mad bastard.
Premier League glory is by no means assured for the Spaniard. Guardiola's arrival adds to the long list of world class managerial minds currently plying their trade in English football: Wenger, Hiddink, Klopp, Ranieri, and potentially even that Portuguese git, each of whom will no doubt have a say.
If there's anything that Roger Schmidt can teach them it's that with a little tactical consideration even the most accomplished of Guardiola sides can be neutralised, albeit with a little bit, with a little bit, with a little bit of bloomin' luck.
In either case Manchester City presents the perfect challenge for Pep: under performing and rich with a defence as questionable as Johnson’s, Guardiola will no doubt spend many enjoyable hours and every bit of the promised £150M masterminding Europe's next big thing.
GITG
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