FOOTBALL loves its narratives and analogies. So, with Manchester City hosting Arsenal this afternoon, the temptation of drawing a parallel between Pep Guardiola and Arsene Wenger was just too strong.
Twenty years ago, Wenger was a progressive foreign coach whose methods were met with scepticism by some and encountered some early bumps in the road, before going on to become an institution. Guardiola has encountered similar rough patches while trying to spread his footballing gospel in a new environment.
Both like playing pretty football.
That’s probably where the analogy ends, but it was enough for the media to bombard both men with the idea on Friday. Typically, they only bit while speaking in generalities.
“You want every manager who has a positive philosophy to succeed,” Wenger said. “Every manager can only act with his own personality. He has strong beliefs and that, for me, is the most important thing.”
The City manager said: “I like the way Arsenal play football. I admire the way he tries to play and especially the quality of the players they like and they buy. I like it a lot.”
Still, they were inevitably presented as kindred spirits separated by time, with Guardiola’s struggles a case of history repeating itself.
It’s a fun thought, but it’s more fun to note how they are different. One was one of the greatest midfielders of his generation; the other barely played professional football. One landed in England on the back of six league titles and two Champions League crowns at two of the biggest clubs in the world; the other had been working in Japan and last won anything in Europe eight years before. One arrived after a four-year pursuit to join a club where the groundwork had been meticulously prepared for his advent; the other showed up at a place with a drinking culture and bacon butties before training.
One was a footballing messiah, the other, “Arsene Who?”. One arrived in June and spent some £170 million; the other landed in October, the beneficiary of £4.2m spentd the previous summer (even inflation-adjusted, there is no comparison).
So while it might make the comparison easier to digest for those who need simple plotlines, the fact is, there’s little in common between the two. Wenger represented a massive cultural revolution. And while the popular narrative is that he taught George Graham’s back four the benefits of diet, stretching and not drinking a dozen pints the night before, thereby allowing them to play on in their mid-30s, it’s not quite so simple.
Wenger himself has told the story of how, when he arrived, he realised things had to change but, when faced with half-a-dozen veterans who had enjoyed success in the past, he had to tread carefully. He won them over by persuading the club to give them all contract extensions and hefty pay rises; all he asked for in exchange was that they give his methods a go. They did, and the rest is history.
Guardiola didn’t face such obstacles. The crew he inherited weren’t popular local icons raised by a manager antithetical to his prin-ciples (whatever you think of Manuel Pellegrini, he is closer to Guardiola than Graham was to Wenger). Guard-iola had already established what an entrepreneur might call “proof of concept” and, in fact, his combin-ation of pressing and building from the back is nowhere near as outlandish as Wenger’s football was in 1996.
The fact that Mauricio Pochettino and Jurgen Klopp – both of whom predate Guardiola in England – combine many of the same elements in their philosophy while coaching big sides is evidence of this.
But perhaps the most striking difference is that, while few would have predicted that Wenger would stick around for two decades, it did not seem unthinkable that if he was successful, he would likely remain at the helm for an extended period.
Wenger always made it clear that if he found a place where he was comfortable and could work well, he would lay down roots. After all, he spent seven years at Monaco, declining the opportunity to move elsewhere (just as he would later say “no” to Real Madrid) precisely because he took a long-term view. Guardiola’s wanderlust, on the other hand, is well-documented. Even at Barcelona, on a near annual basis, he talked about moving on, about how he was too consumed by the job, about seeking new challenges. You would be shocked if – no matter how much he wins or doesn’t win – Guardiola was still at the Etihad come the 2019-20 season.
They are products of different eras in different realities. And, if anything, it’s their differences – not their commonalities – which make today’s clash so interesting.
ON Friday, Sunderland manager David Moyes said he had no idea that the owner, Ellis Short, had put the club up for sale. “I would have had to have thought a lot more about [accepting the job],” Moyes said. “I was not made aware that the club could possibly go up for sale.”
Disingenuous? You’d think so. Short, who bought Sunderland in 2009, has been rumoured for the past five years to be ready to sell. But even if you did not know that, surely you’d have noticed the club made losses of £55.5m in the last three seasons for which accounts are available?
Short may be a billionaire, but absurdly wealthy people tend not to enjoy losing money hand over fist, unless they are having a good time. And perennial relegation battles, complete with managerial changes, aren’t fun. Another hint that Short wasn’t looking to build Sunderland into some kind of global juggernaut came in the last transfer window.
“I knew in the summer what we were spending was small in comparison [to other clubs] and I said that to the owner,” Moyes added.
Of course, the spending wasn’t really small. In net terms, Sunderland were ninth, which means 11 clubs spent less. When Moyes said they did not spend much “in comparison” it’s only true if he’s comparing Sunderland to Manchester City or Arsenal or Chelsea. Otherwise, it’s a question not of how much they spent, but how they spent it.
And the answer is: not very well. Moyes has plenty of mitigating circumstances – Sunderland were not a good side before he got there and he only arrived in late July – and surely they are more pertinent than the lack of summer spending or the fact he was – supposedly – unaware Short was ready to pack it in.
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