Colin Sheridan: Inflexible Guardiola must restart his football supercomputer
League Reset: Defeat Park Premier Guardiola After Pep Manchester At Villa City The Manager
It's been a long time since the sight of Manchester City next up on the fixture list of your football team was a good thing. Think, mid 90s. When Niall Quinn was their top scorer, and, after Tony Coton and Andy Dibble, their third choice goalkeeper. Peter Beagrie and Giorgi Kinkladze provided some light entertainment on the wings, while Alan Kernaghan and Keith Curle were comedy gold at the back. They were actually quite an enjoyable team to watch, unless you supported them.
They were such a non-threatening presence in the league that, when they got relegated in 1996, as a Manchester United fan in the first flushes of my petulant youth, I was actually disappointed, not ecstatic at the demise of a rival. Sport, like life, is cyclical. Everton visit the Etihad on St Stephen's Day to play a team even Uwe Rösler would fancy bagging a brace against. A team with a war chest the size of a small country's GDP, and with a manager who many credit with revolutionising an entire sport. They still possess the most potent attacking weapon in all of football in the guise of Erling Haaland, while, in Jack Grealish and Phil Foden, they boast two of the most inexplicably wasted talents the game has seen. It's such a mess that even Everton will be happy for the road trip. You can only dance with the girls on the dance floor, and right now, City are not dancing. They’re slumped on the coach, scratching themselves.
Saturday's 2-1 defeat at Aston Villa left them joint bottom of the form table over the past eight games with just Southampton for company, and while form by its nature is only temporary, a congested Christmas future list is just about the last thing Man City need. A prolonged international break, maybe, not three consecutive games in the space of seven days as they now face. By the time they meet Salford in the FA Cup on the 11th day of 2025, the 11th-placed team in Football League Two might just fancy their chances. Momentum is a curious thing. It cares little for reputation, and Pep Guardiola is learning that it doesn’t matter how many trophies you’ve won, you’re judged only on your last game.
In the military, we were always taught that flexibility was both a fundamental of offense and defensive tactics. To this end, Guardiola has always been lacking as a leader. Not in the sense he is overly tied to one particular way of playing. No, if anything, he has been too willing to change and tinker, especially in big games when he has previously shown a tendency to overthink and ruminate his team into disaster. Where he lacks flexibility is in his stubborn unwillingness to delegate and trust his players. Players worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Players for whom football is a piano they can play blindfolded. Footballers who - under Guardiola - have been broken down and reassembled to the point they seem unable to think for themselves. Foden, Grealish and Haaland should be able to beat Everton with no team talk and a couple of mannequins playing at the back. Instead, they currently resemble characters in one of those body-swap movies. Unsure of themselves and perpetually looking at the sideline for guidance. These are the monsters Pep has created. And these are the monsters that may finally destroy him.
The Mayo Gaelic football team that challenged Dublin between 2012 and 2021 possessed something extraordinary that was almost impossible to teach. The joke I know many of you want to insert here will go something like - “yes, an incredible ability to combust,” and while there is truth in the fickleness of their abilities in the clutch, what set them apart from every other team was their prowess in embracing chaos. Not just embracing it, but seeking it. Think Keith Higgins abandoning all defensive responsibilities in search of a score his forwards could not provide. Think Lee Keegan playing wherever he pleased. Think Diarmuid O’Connor’s outstretched leg rescuing a lost cause, a single act that turned a game and hastened the end of the Dublin Empire.
Players being sent off, goalkeepers being dropped, injuries, deficits. The greater the entropy, the more potent the play. Gaelic football had become so structured it appeared the only way you could beat the system was to out-structure it. Instead, Mayo chose chaos, again and again, and though it ultimately came up short, their pursuit of happiness was a glorious spectacle, even in its inglorious manifestation.
Guardiola would’ve been appalled, but he might learn something about how enabling players makes them leaders instead of subservient sheep. If he really is the greatest manager of all time, he needs to prove his own ability to change course mid-voyage, not by reprogramming the computer, but by unplugging it altogether.
Galway is a small town, so the presence of behemoth athletes like the Connacht Rugby players is hard avoided. One man who moves amongst the crowd, mostly unnoticed, is Mack Hansen, which is a hell of an irony for a guy whose personality appears as impressive as his sporting talent. It’s not that he hides behind opulent sunglasses or a team of minders, either. Take your coffee how and wherever you like, and you’re likely to happen upon the Irish winger. It’s just, unlike many of his oversized teammates, his presence is understated. You’d think you’d recognise him, but, if it wasn’t for his dog, he’d drift by you unnoticed.
The same, thankfully, cannot be said for Mack when it comes to actual rugby. Both on the field and in the media he is a tonic. Unrefined, and refreshingly devoid of the polite etiquette that often suffocates rugby, he plays and speaks his mind. Last Saturday, after his team lost 20-12 to Leinster, he’d had enough, and told us so. “Can I say something real quick about the situation?,” he asked, as everybody except the Connacht PR people screamed a collective YES, PLEASE DO! “ Like, I feel like we get this every week. We never get any calls, ever. I’ve been feeling this for years now. Like, you can’t possibly tell me yourselves sitting there, like checking the Gus McCarthy one, how much? How much did they check that: 10, 11 times?”
He was far from finished. “Bundee gets a direct hit to the head, it’s quite obvious, no call, doesn’t care. It’s like we get that every time so you can hear the frustration in my voice cos it’s starting to get to the point where honestly, it’s bullshit and it’s starting to get really frustrating for us cos people will say we are an inconsistent team but, Jesus Christ, when you are getting some of the calls we’re getting like, of course, you are going to be.”
Hansen had a strong point, and his frustration speaks to a bigger problem within Irish rugby where the westerners are still treated like an afterthought, by administrators, opposition players, and in the case of Saturday night, officials. It’s good a guy of Hansen's stature calls it out. It’d just be better if he didn’t have to.
Fitter. Stronger. Faster. With the introduction of new playing rules imminent in Gaelic football, the committee responsible for their architecture and implementation will look for players' anonymous GPS data in order to ascertain what impact the changes have on how players move. It will make fascinating reading, but how will it be read? If the results show - as I suspect they might - that players are required to run far more than they previously did, are we then not facing a situation where to make that possible they will consequently be trained way harder? Will that promote the development of athletes rather than artists? If it does, will the Football Rules Committee push on regardless, or - cognisant of the welfare of amateur players - will it force a rethink?
While Patrick Mahomes may have a bottomless bag of tricks and the championship rings to back up his talent, the most watchable quarterback in the NFL for years has been Buffalo’s Josh Allen. Next month, he will run away with the season's MVP award. Allen combines superlative basics with superman abilities to evade defences and make impossible throws. He is clutch, and he is tougher than any modern day QB. Playing for Buffalo, he needs to be. No team has fallen short more often than the Bills, who lost four consecutive Super Bowls from 1991 to 1994 - a notorious run captured by the brilliant ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "Four Falls of Buffalo." With Allen healthy and happy, this year could finally be their turn. Catch him while you can.