Pep Guardiola facing challenges both old and new at Manchester City

After two seasons of absolute dominance, Pep Guardiola is now staring down his toughest challenge yet at Manchester City.

If Manchester City are to pull off an almighty comeback and catch Liverpool at the top of the Premier League table to clinch a third successive league title they might well look back upon a power cut at Turf Moor as a turning point. It was a flaring of the malaise that had started to take hold at the Etihad Stadium.

Indeed, videos of City’s players singing Oasis songs and waving their phone lights like lighters at a concert before the 4-1 win over Burnley had even kicked off hinted at a fresh attitude within the champions’ camp.

https://twitter.com/ManCity/status/1201993212925292546?s=20

Given the scale of the task at hand, though, it might prove to be something of a false dawn even if City claim a derby win over Manchester United to back up their Burnley result this weekend.

This season has followed a very consistent pattern for Pep Guardiola. At both Barcelona and Bayern Munich (particularly the former), the Catalan’s time in charge was categorized into three different acts.

The first act saw Guardiola communicate his ideas and sift through the players who could take them on board from those who couldn’t.

The second act was the most successful period, with Guardiola’s team at their peak over this stretch. It’s at this time that Barcelona and Bayern Munich became pure reflections of their manager both as a soccer coach and a personality. Think Barca’s 2011 Champions League-winning side, widely hailed as the greatest team of the modern age.

The third act, however, is tougher to decipher. Guardiola still won trophies in his final seasons at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, but in both cases things started to fray around the edges. It’s at this point that Guardiola’s grip on his team tends to slip. Such is the intensity of the Catalans’ ideology that even the merest of drops in commitment has an effect.

It’s this third act that Guardiola is now into at Man City. It’s been evident in many of the Premier League champions’ performances this season. See the 2-1 win over Chelsea last month – City might have claimed all three points, but they did so on a far-from-typical Guardiola display, conceding possession and dropping their intensity to an unprecedented extent. Indeed, never before had a Guardiola team claimed such a low share of possession in a match.

This may have been tactically intentional to hold Chelsea at arm’s length, but it, along with a lot of what has unfolded over the first half of the season, raised questions over how the rest of the Guardiola era will pan out at Manchester City. By staying for a fifth season beyond next summer, the 48-year-old will be in new territory.

Guardiola’s City contract will take him until the end of the 2020-21 season. Never before has he gone five seasons at the one club and the Catalan has admitted he is “open” to extending his stay even further. “I’m so comfortable working with this club,” Guardiola said in a recent interview. “When you are [somewhere for] five years it depends on the results. We will see what happens this season and next season.”

That sort of non-committal closing remark is usually how managers say something without saying anything at all, but wasn’t the case here. We really will see what happens over the next two seasons. That will go a long way determining Guardiola’s legacy at Man City and in the Premier League as a whole.

Can he build a second great team at the Etihad Stadium? Investment is undeniably needed to revitalize City with this particular cycle nearing its end, but will Guardiola oversee evolution or a revolution? Will he start from scratch or seek to build on what he already has? There is no past evidence to base a forecast on because, while this season has followed a predictable pattern, Guardiola is taking a step into the unknown.