For better or for worse, it always seems to come back to Stan Collymore.
This isn’t to doubt the writing chops of the former Nottingham Forest, Liverpool and Aston Villa striker as a roving “journaliste”. On the contrary, he is a two-time SJA British Sports Journalism Awards winner.
But Collymore’s takes on Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City reign map out how some critics have consistently moved the goalposts when it comes to how a record-breaking period of success should be analysed.
They chart Guardiola’s route from a fancy Catalan intellectual who was about to be brought to heel by the brutal realities of the Premier League to his current incarnation in the eyes of some: an insufferable bore who was always going to win everything anyway, so why does anyone care?
Anyway, let’s dive back to 2016 and Pep’s tricky first season in England. After a disastrous 4-2 defeat at Leicester City, Guardiola infamously remarked: “I’m not to a coach for the tackles. I don’t train the tackles. What’s tackles.”
Who did this guy think he was? Stan wasn’t having any of it.
“If he thinks he’s going to turn up and outplay everybody in the Premier League, and that teams like Watford, Leicester, Bournemouth, Southampton and Crystal Palace are going to let his Manchester City side have the ball for 90 per cent of the time and pass pretty patterns around them so they can get a result, then he is absolutely deluded,” Collymore now infamously wrote in his Mirror column.
“In fact, he is beyond deluded. And if he thinks he doesn’t need to teach tackling or one-on-one combat in training then he’ll be going back to Spain with his tail between his legs.”
While the current position of his tail is unclear, Guardiola is most definitely still here, five-and-a-half years into a City tenure that is set to run until 2023.
Collymore did, in a best-case scenario, at least flag what the following season would bring.
“Maybe he’ll win one Premier League because he’ll spend another £200m and mop up the best youth talent,” he mused.
Sure enough, there was an overhaul that brought in the likes of Ederson, Kyle Walker and Bernardo Silva before City - in Guardiola’s own words - “destroyed the Premier League" with a 100-point haul.
Ah, but to be great, you had to retain the title. Only Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho had managed that in the Premier League era.
Guardiola duly did, with 98 points to pip Jurgen Klopp’s Champions League-winning Liverpool at the post. Greatness secured, right?
“In a decade or two, I don’t think we’ll even look back on Guardiola as one of the top 10 managers in football history,” Collymore opined in October 2020, 17 months after City completed an unprecedented domestic treble.
“Top 20? Yes. But top 10, no. Number.1? Absolutely nowhere near.”
This unusually specific put-down, which is also probably a relatively strong compliment, came after City had been dethroned as Premier League champions by Liverpool.
By that point, we were into the realms of managers who had Guardiola’s number. Klopp had a fair enough case after some stirring victories over City, while a run of three defeats in the space of six weeks at the end of last season meant Thomas Tuchel also represented a puzzle to perplex Pep.
The top of the Premier League, where Chelsea and Liverpool are now 11 and 12 points shy respectively (and with the latter having played one game more) of City suggests the maths was out on premature suggestions that anyone had cracked the Guardiola code.
What did you expect with all that money? Well, plenty of people, at various stages, expected something different. Something less resoundingly successful.
From being found out by English football to needing to retain the title and being faced down by the most talented rivals of his generation, Guardiola has emerged at the other side unbowed.
Which brings us to boring, boring City. The growing chorus of snorers should be aware Collymore was ahead of the curve on this one.
“If I were given a straight choice between playing for Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola, I’d choose the German,” he said in a piece last season praising City’s incredible 21-match winning run.
“It’s rock ‘n’ roll, three-dimensional football for me over the robotic, purposeful, 65-passes-per-goal fare that Manchester City’s boss serves up.”
There comes a point when it’s healthy for those City fans who worry about the naysayers to stop furrowing their brows. You can find ample, due and fulsome praise for Guardiola without looking too hard, so join that fraternity in enjoying the finest team England has ever seen without delving into the bad vibes.
The trap plenty have fallen into is expecting the next Guardiola achievement to extinguish dissent. In reality, the goalposts just shift again. People don’t admit they’re wrong - it’s 2022.
“In the league, yes, he’s 9/10,” Collymore wrote in the aftermath of City’s botched Champions League final against Chelsea last season. “But in the Champions League with Bayern, a club which won the competition before him and since he left, and City, who have the best squad in Europe, he’s 1/10.”
And so it goes on. Should City lift the big-eared trophy in St Petersburg in May, perhaps Pep will merit 4 or 5/10? Maybe he’ll even break into the top-10 coaches of all time?
If the Blues become European champions, there’ll be another asterisk and some eye-rolling at more boring success by the same people who told us such success would not happen on Guardiola’s watch. The malleable measurements of greatness will shift again and City’s manager will keep laughing all the way to the trophy cabinet.
Where do you rank Pep Guardiola among the all-time greats? Follow City Is Ours editor Dom Farrell on Twitter to get involved in the discussion and give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
