Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games.
Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford. Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing, 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing.
“We play so soft,” the manager tells his squad, hoping to see a response against Spurs. But no. At the Etihad Stadium on Thursday 19 January City are trailing 2-0 at the break and Guardiola’s assessment is reinforced. Despite a spirited and victorious fightback, with two goals from Riyad Mahrez and one each from Haaland and Julián Álvarez, Guardiola later launches into an unprecedented public attack.
“We are a happy flowers team, I don’t want this. I want to beat Arsenal. I want a reaction – not just from players, staff, the whole organisation,” he tells journalists, who are left stunned by Guardiola rounding on his squad for the first time since taking charge in the summer of 2016.
Except this was no off-the-cuff scattergun attack that risked alienating those players whose job Guardiola depends on. Instead, having already told them in private the same via his “we play so soft” speech, it casts the City manager as a shrewd operator, conscious of how to retain their loyalty, and a driven winner who will try every ploy available to wake his team up and stave off the challenge of Mikel Arteta’s side.
Rewind to last season and an Etihad Campus pitch for another key moment in how City shifted closer to the rarefied air occupied by Huddersfield, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United (twice) in being the only clubs to claim a hat-trick of championships. Guardiola’s eyes have an expression that is familiar to an inner circle that includes the sporting director, Txiki Begiristain, and his assistant coaches, Rodolfo Borrell and Carlos Vicens. The manager’s look on observing an under-18 prospect training for the first time with the senior squad means: “Do you see this? I like him.”
The young footballer is Rico Lewis and he is to have a significant effect on City’s progress toward a fifth title in six years under Guardiola. In pre-season, the then 17-year-old makes his debut in the 76th minute of a 2-1 win over the Mexican side Club América in Houston. There is a second cameo a few days later in City’s 1-0 storm-lashed victory over Bayern Munich in Green Bay, when Guardiola plays Lewis in the final minutes.
The manager has seen enough and hands him a senior debut in the season’s second league match – towards the close of the 4-0 victory against Bournemouth. In the teenager’s first start, November’s 3-1 Champions League win over Sevilla, Lewis becomes, at 17 years old and 346 days, the second-youngest Englishman behind Jude Bellingham to score in the competition.
Lewis’s ability to move smoothly inside from full-back and increase numbers in midfield is a revelation and will offer Guardiola a vital extra tactical dimension during the title defence. The boy from Bury’s youthful zest will have a crucial off-field impact, too: rejuvenate Guardiola and his “soft” players (as the manager later says). When João Cancelo, the first-choice left-back, refuses to accept reduced game-time, Guardiola’s decision to loan him to Bayern on winter transfer deadline day is made easier by Lewis’s emergence.
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In early January at Chelsea, with the match level at the break, Lewis is introduced and proves instrumental in a City win derived from Mahrez’s 63rd-minute finish. After February’s 4-1 victory against Bournemouth Lewis does not start a league match again until Leeds are beaten on 6 May, but he has greatly influenced his manager’s tactical thinking.
By then City have overhauled Arsenal and the day before Guardiola says: “It’s thanks to Rico – he helped us to understand what we had to do to play better. The last 10 games he didn’t play much but without Rico this season, the step we made as a team would have been more difficult. I’m pretty convinced about that. The movement he does makes many things fluid. After that Kyle [Walker] realises, and John [Stones] playing in that position has been exceptional.”
As, too, have the team of a brilliant coach who has again masterminded a title triumph. Since the Premier League announced more than 100 counts of financial wrongdoing against the club on 6 February – all are firmly denied – City are unbeaten. There would be no surprise if these charges were also used as an us-against-the-world motivational tool in a campaign that could end in immortality.
If Manchester United are beaten in the FA Cup final on 3 June and Internazionale in the Champions League showpiece seven days later, City will join their neighbours as England’s only treble winners. But whatever occurs, Guardiola will surely take a break and then start focusing on next season, and the quest to achieve what no side has done: become English champions across four consecutive seasons.