Europa Conference Final/Champions League Final

[Stevo985]

10 hours ago, DCJonah said:

When has pep built a title winning team from a similar starting point? 

He hasn’t needed to. It’s like saying “when has Messi gone to a shit team and made them good?”

Why would Pep go to a lesser team just to prove himself to a few people on the internet. 
 

He’s absolutely excellent at making really good teams even better

[Genie]

9 hours ago, rbcuk said:

Ecstatic the fans look 

Villa Park when we qualified for the Conference League play off round was more excited than this  

[Genie]

5 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

He’s absolutely excellent at making really good teams even better

100% agree.

I place this as an achievement, but a lesser achievement of what Wenger did, SAF did, Klopp did, Mourinho did, Simeone did etc.

[Zatman]

Pep legacy will always be tarnished because he is a drugs cheat and it was suspected at Barcelona too

You wouldn't let Lance Armstrong run a cycling team and not be suspicious

[Keyblade]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

He hasn’t needed to. It’s like saying “when has Messi gone to a shit team and made them good?”

Why would Pep go to a lesser team just to prove himself to a few people on the internet. 
 

He’s absolutely excellent at making really good teams even better

Yeah. To be honest, I don't think there's another manager out there that would have City playing like this and this dominant in terms of trophy haul. 

There's always that lingering cynicism though of, with the likes of De Bruyne, Haaland, Grealish et al, maybe he should be winning as much as he is?

It's a lot easier to get a team to play in your image when you can literally just go out and buy the best players in the world in their respective positions, and just stack up a squad full of them. I count 4 PFA POTY winners in that team. One of whom was bought *after* he won the award.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

51 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Pep legacy will always be tarnished because he is a drugs cheat and it was suspected at Barcelona too

You wouldn't let Lance Armstrong run a cycling team and not be suspicious

The referee bribing scandal at Barca too.

[Stevo985]

36 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Yeah. To be honest, I don't think there's another manager out there that would have City playing like this and this dominant in terms of trophy haul. 

There's always that lingering cynicism though of, with the likes of De Bruyne, Haaland, Grealish et al, maybe he should be winning as much as he is?

It's a lot easier to get a team to play in your image when you can literally just go out and buy the best players in the world in their respective positions, and just stack up a squad full of them. I count 4 PFA POTY winners in that team. One of whom was bought *after* he won the award.

It’s valid. But why aren’t other managers having this overwhelming success at huge clubs? 
Barcelona, Real, Bayern Munich etc have all had periods in their history where they have been absolutely miles ahead of teams in their league and teams in Europe.
 

The Galacticos literally went out and did exactly what you said, bought the best players from any team they wanted. But they didn’t have the success Pep has had.
 

Very few managers have ever had the success that Pep has had. Especially at multiple clubs. It takes more than money to achieve that

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Stevo985

[JPJCB]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

He hasn’t needed to. It’s like saying “when has Messi gone to a shit team and made them good?”

Why would Pep go to a lesser team just to prove himself to a few people on the internet. 
 

He’s absolutely excellent at making really good teams even better

To be fair messi played for a faltering Barca side for a number of years before he left. Obviously that’s hardly playing for a sub standard club, but he was in a situation where he was absolutely miles above the quality of anyone else in the team.

I think the point about pep is that 1.) he’s never managed a team with meaningful budget constraints; 2.) at both Bayern and city he’s shown a tendency (particularly at city) to use that ample budget to its absolute maximum rather than any semblance of value for money. He’s an unbelievable manager but he only wants to work with unbelievably talented (and expensive) players
 

for me that means there’ll always be a question mark as to his ability to manage a team not full of superstars- something that Ferguson proved (he won it with kids) and other managers like wenger and klopp have shown. If you were a chairman who had budget constraints and heard pep or klopp was available- who would you go for? For me, klopp would be the more proven choice 

[The_Steve]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

Pep legacy will always be tarnished because he is a drugs cheat and it was suspected at Barcelona too

You wouldn't let Lance Armstrong run a cycling team and not be suspicious

Speaking of that - from 2017

"Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona were fined by Uefa for breaching the same kind of anti-doping “whereabouts” regulations of which his Manchester City team have been accused. Uefa fined Barcelona €30,000 (now about £26,000) in 2010 for failing to notify anti-doping officials of a change in their training schedule, which meant that players were not present when officials arrived to drug test them. Barcelona blamed a system failure and were ordered to pay the fine with a further €45,000 fine suspended for three years."

The corruption and cheating runs very deep.

[DCJonah]

50 minutes ago, The_Steve said:

Speaking of that - from 2017

"Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona were fined by Uefa for breaching the same kind of anti-doping “whereabouts” regulations of which his Manchester City team have been accused. Uefa fined Barcelona €30,000 (now about £26,000) in 2010 for failing to notify anti-doping officials of a change in their training schedule, which meant that players were not present when officials arrived to drug test them. Barcelona blamed a system failure and were ordered to pay the fine with a further €45,000 fine suspended for three years."

The corruption and cheating runs very deep.

So drugs cheat as a player and then this at two clubs. Must be a coincidence. Man's a genius. 

[DCJonah]

do other potential greatest of all time managers have this history with PEDs as a player and manager? 

 

[Zatman]

I always got mocked on here when I brought up his tainted playing career. So happy some journos and football fans are finally mentioning it

Cheating scumbag

Edited June 11, 2023 by Zatman

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, JPJCB said:

To be fair messi played for a faltering Barca side for a number of years before he left. Obviously that’s hardly playing for a sub standard club, but he was in a situation where he was absolutely miles above the quality of anyone else in the team.

I think the point about pep is that 1.) he’s never managed a team with meaningful budget constraints; 2.) at both Bayern and city he’s shown a tendency (particularly at city) to use that ample budget to its absolute maximum rather than any semblance of value for money. He’s an unbelievable manager but he only wants to work with unbelievably talented (and expensive) players
 

for me that means there’ll always be a question mark as to his ability to manage a team not full of superstars- something that Ferguson proved (he won it with kids) and other managers like wenger and klopp have shown. If you were a chairman who had budget constraints and heard pep or klopp was available- who would you go for? For me, klopp would be the more proven choice 

But why would he manage a team with budget constraints? And why would he choose to use players who aren’t unbelievably talented and expensive if he’s got the budget?

 

I would choose Pep out of those two every day of the week. Without question. 
 

In fact if you offered to swap Emery with either of those two this summer I’d say yes to Pep and no to Klopp

[villaliver]

Would be nice to be in the final next season 

[JPJCB]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

But why would he manage a team with budget constraints? And why would he choose to use players who aren’t unbelievably talented and expensive if he’s got the budget?

 

I would choose Pep out of those two every day of the week. Without question. 
 

In fact if you offered to swap Emery with either of those two this summer I’d say yes to Pep and no to Klopp

I’m not saying that he should choose to do this or that. Of course he’s rationale to pick the club with the best possible financial condition. I’m saying that those circumstances mean that he’s unproven with less abundant resources. Can pep take a team including the likes of Jordan Henderson,  naby keita, joe Gomez and turn them into title contenders? No idea…

by the same token, if you give klopp the kind of resources Pep has had- a transfer budget of multiple hundreds of million every summer, the ability to have two £50m+ players in every position- does the city/Liverpool rivalry become more competitive? Highly likely 

[The_Steve]

4 hours ago, DCJonah said:

do other potential greatest of all time managers have this history with PEDs as a player and manager? 

 

PED Guardiola 

[LondonLax]

8 hours ago, JPJCB said:

To be fair messi played for a faltering Barca side for a number of years before he left. Obviously that’s hardly playing for a sub standard club, but he was in a situation where he was absolutely miles above the quality of anyone else in the team.

I think the point about pep is that 1.) he’s never managed a team with meaningful budget constraints; 2.) at both Bayern and city he’s shown a tendency (particularly at city) to use that ample budget to its absolute maximum rather than any semblance of value for money. He’s an unbelievable manager but he only wants to work with unbelievably talented (and expensive) players
 

for me that means there’ll always be a question mark as to his ability to manage a team not full of superstars- something that Ferguson proved (he won it with kids) and other managers like wenger and klopp have shown. If you were a chairman who had budget constraints and heard pep or klopp was available- who would you go for? For me, klopp would be the more proven choice 

Look at it this way though:

His assistant manager went on to finish 2nd in the league with Arsenal. His former youth team coach went on to finish 3rd in the league with Man United. His former captain went on to walk the Championship with Burnley.

His methods clearly work and he is obviously the premier manager of his generation. 

[Follyfoot]

8 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

It’s valid. But why aren’t other managers having this overwhelming success at huge clubs? 
Barcelona, Real, Bayern Munich etc have all had periods in their history where they have been absolutely miles ahead of teams in their league and teams in Europe.
 

The Galacticos literally went out and did exactly what you said, bought the best players from any team they wanted. But they didn’t have the success Pep has had.
 

Very few managers have ever had the success that Pep has had. Especially at multiple clubs. It takes more than money to achieve that

 

Indeed, it does, Undisclosed illegal linked third party payments, performance enhancing drugs and general shady behaviour. none of this is true obviously because the person trying to prosecute was an Arsenal supporter. Hans Christian Andersen wrote worse fairytales.

[Zatman]

2 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

Indeed, it does, Undisclosed illegal linked third party payments, performance enhancing drugs and general shady behaviour. none of this is true obviously because the person trying to prosecute was an Arsenal supporter. Hans Christian Andersen wrote worse fairytales.

Its also delaying us being named 2020 Carabao Cup Champions

[JPJCB]

20 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Look at it this way though:

His assistant manager went on to finish 2nd in the league with Arsenal. His former youth team coach went on to finish 3rd in the league with Man United. His former captain went on to walk the Championship with Burnley.

His methods clearly work and he is obviously the premier manager of his generation. 

I’m not sure that means much. Most of fergie’s ex players turned managers have been rubbish. Does that make him a bad manager?

Dont get me wrong. Pep is an excellent manager and has had a huge impact on  the game. But his methods- at least when coached by him- have always been delivered with elite players and therefore hugely abundant resources. So that caveat needs to be borne in mind when evaluating just how good he is