Tuesday 24 April 2018 12:11, UK
Manchester City celebrated their Premier League title triumph with a thumping 5-0 win over Swansea on Saturday, but how has Pep Guardiola mastermind this season's success?
Manchester City have invested heavily in the transfer market, but as Sky Sports News' man in Manchester James Cooper explains, it's not just about the money.
Here are some of the other factors behind their success...
Guardiola has stated that the foundations for City's success were laid in pre-season, with the watershed moment being the team's performance in the 3-0 win over Tottenham in Nashville. "There we saw altogether, not me, the players saw, 'OK this is the way we have to do it'," he said in December. "Since then I think we have maintained that level."
"It was the timing of having that good result so early in the campaign," says Cooper. "I think it helped him forget last season and see that he had something he could properly build on.
"Pep is a massive admirer of Pochettino and what he's done with his team at Tottenham - he will gush about them when he gets the opportunity - so to dismantle them in that manner gave him encouragement that his ideals would work.
"It was like a staging post. They could look at that and say, 'They are a very good team and that's what we have done to them. Now we can go into the Premier League and show everyone what we are all about'."
Guardiola's side went on to win 19 of their first 20 Premier League games of the season, avoiding defeat in any competition until a 2-1 reverse to Shakhtar Donetsk at the start of December. Looking back, the victory in Nashville was a sign of what was to come.
According to Cooper, City have benefitted from the strong team spirit Guardiola has fostered not just in his playing squad but throughout the club.
"Take the League Cup win, which was clearly an important one as it was their first under Guardiola," he says. "They had a club meeting in the following week. Pep got up and made a speech to the entire club saying thank you and saying everyone had been a part of it.
"I was told another story the other day. He walked into the CFA [City Football Academy] for a training session on a Saturday and saw that the club's Down's syndrome team were being coached. He brought the whole first-team squad off the field to meet the kids. He engages in a way that isn't often seen from football people and he is absolutely adored by everyone at Manchester City.
"It's the same in the dressing room. The actual dressing room is a circle so that everyone can have their say and nobody is more important than anyone else. He wants to foster togetherness and you can see it in the players who aren't always hugely involved but still buy into it. They all know they are part of a process.
"There is a real first-team culture, but in other clubs that often comes to the detriment of the academy. I get the impression that he sees Manchester City as a whole, rather than thinking, 'This is the first team and I don't care about anything else'.
"People on the coaching staff or people in and around that first-team area will commonly tell you that the likes of Pellegrini and Mancini were good managers, but they didn't give the same adulation and trust as Pep. Trust is really important to him. It's the biggest word in his vocabulary."
Cooper believes the decision to pull out of a move for Alexis Sanchez was taken with team spirit and trust in mind. "Would Alexis Sanchez have been the best player at Manchester City?" he says. "You would probably say no. So paying him the huge amount of money he wanted would have created problems within the dressing room."
Manchester City have spent close to £300m on new signings over the course of the season, but when it comes to improving the team, Cooper says Guardiola's coaching has been more influential than his spending.
"If you look at his spending at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, it's around the billion pound mark now," he says. "That's the stick that is often waved at him but there is much more to it than that. You look at this Manchester City squad and they have all improved as players.
"The classic examples are Raheem Sterling and Nicolas Otamendi but there are others. Benjamin Mendy was playing better football than he ever played at Monaco before his injury. Ederson has improved on the way he played at Benfica.
"There are other case studies where there is still some improvement needed - I think John Stones is taking more time than Pep would have wanted - but then you look at the guy in front of him, Fernandinho, who is playing the best football of his life.
"It's the same for Fabian Delph and Oleksandr Zinchenko. Pep has put so much time into both those players to help them become the emergency left-backs. One-on-one coaching, watching DVDs, work they have done on their positioning… It has all paid off.
"The players love the fact that he will spend time with them one on one and talk to them about their families as well as coach them. He will show a real concern about them. He has engaged them all."
Guardiola, Cooper says, has also succeeded in getting the best out of Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany - two City stalwarts whose futures seemed in doubt.
"I thought Aguero might have been on his way out of Manchester City because he wasn't doing the things that Guardiola looks for from a front man - the industry, the working back and being almost a surrogate midfielder - but he's doing more of that now," he says.
"There were suspicions that Guardiola might use Kompany's fitness issues to get him out of the club, but like Aguero, he has proved that he will be part of the system rather than in charge of it. He respects Guardiola and he has changed the manager's mind by accepting his methods."
"The scary thing about Manchester City is that the feeling at the football club is that we still haven't seen the best of them yet," says Cooper.
So will Guardiola stick around to create a dynasty? "He hasn't signed a new deal yet but I think that will happen at the end of the season," adds Cooper. "He has traditionally looked at three-year sequences as being the time a manager should spend at a football club, but I think he'll go on to do five years at Manchester City.
"There's recognition on Pep's part that he can earn more at City than anywhere else, but it's bigger than that. I think he realises that he's got an opportunity to put Manchester City on the map and make them something similar to Manchester United. If they go on and win the Champions League or make it to the final this season then that's massive progress and the legacy will go further. And with the resources to get other players, it's a perfect situation for him."
Comment below to get involved in the debate, but please adhere to our House Rules. If you wish to report any comment, simply click on the down arrow next to the offending comment and click 'Report'.
