Meek City cries out for Pep’s guidance
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MANCHESTER City’s meek exit from the UEFA Champions League following Wednesday’s 0-1 semifinal, second-leg defeat by Real Madrid suggested that incoming head coach Pep Guardiola cannot arrive quickly enough.
While Fernando’s first-half own goal at the Bernabeu was all that separated the teams, City barely laid a glove on Zinedine Zidane’s men, registering just two shots on target over the 180 minutes of the tie.
Manuel Pellegrini, who Guardiola will replace, argued there had been nothing between the sides, but players, fans and pundits were united in expressing their frustration.
City went “out with a whimper”, according to the back-page headline in The Times, while the Daily Mail’s Martin Samuel said the team was “sleepwalking” under Pellegrini.
Analyzing the match for BT Sport, the former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand said: “If you’re going to go out, you want to go out all guns blazing, fighting.
“You want to think, ‘We’ve given it everything we’ve got, we’ve thrown the kitchen sink at it.’ I don’t think they’ll be able to go home or go into the changing room and say that. And that’s the disappointing thing.”
City goalkeeper Joe Hart chose his words more carefully, but the annoyance was visible on his face during a post-match interview.
“We just didn’t have that little bit more,” said the England goalkeeper. “Did we do enough to win the game? I don’t know.”
Frustration manifested itself on the pitch, too, as lone striker Sergio Aguero, starved of any service, dropped deeper and deeper in search of the ball.
City’s top scorer this season with 28 goals, the Argentina international mustered just two shots — both off-target — during the tie and has now gone five UCL games without registering an effort on target.
Record signing Kevin De Bruyne, the inspiration behind the quarterfinal win over Paris Saint-Germain, struggled to influence proceedings after being moved to the left flank to accommodate Yaya Toure, whose lumbering performance was described as “woeful” by The Daily Telegraph.
Having fallen foul of Guardiola during his time at Barcelona, the hulking Ivorian is expected to form part of a close-season clearout at the Etihad Stadium.
Raheem Sterling, City’s other big-money attacking signing this season, along with De Bruyne, was given only half an hour to make a difference and when he won a free-kick in a promising position on the left, De Bruyne wasted it by going for goal.
But at least in Aguero, De Bruyne, Sterling and the injured David Silva, Guardiola possesses the nimbleness of thought and foot in attack upon which he has built success with Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
But there is work for Guardiola to do in defense, particularly as captain Vincent Kompany’s physical vulnerability — he succumbed to the 33rd injury of his 8-year City tenure in Madrid — is becoming a serious concern.
Neither Nicolas Otamendi nor Eliaquim Mangala, both acquired at lavish expense, have convinced, but Guardiola’s work with Javi Martinez — a holding midfielder turned center-back — at Bayern shows that he has the patience for defensive grunt work on the training ground.
“Pep Guardiola has a huge job on his hands,” said Ferdinand. “It’s not a confident team, like the one he got at Bayern. This is a totally different proposition.”
In the immediate short-term, City faces a battle to hold onto the fourth and final UCL qualifying spot, beginning with Sunday’s high-stakes home game with third-place Arsenal.
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