Pep Guardiola channels Sir Alex Ferguson as Man City beat Arsenal

Pep Guardiola reviews Arsenal win

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Great football managers need many skills, one of which is the ability to talk complete hogwash yet make it seem believable to their tribe. Sir Alex Ferguson was a master at it, circling the wagons at Old Trafford with some dastardly fixture list plot or refereeing injustice to illustrate how it was the red side of Manchester against the world.

Pep Guardiola has shown over the past week that he can play the game with the best of them. The devastating list of charges levelled at Manchester City by the Premier League for their alleged rule breaches could have been hugely destabilising. 

Instead he has taken what is potentially the biggest financial scandal ever to hit the English club game and used it to reboot his team. Suddenly there is a common enemy. The hunger, Guardiola publicly questioned after the home game against Tottenham with his squad and the club’s fans so sated by success, has been rekindled.

Aston Villa and Arsenal have been dispatched and City are back on top of the table. Every team needs a cause and Guardiola has been gifted one. His passionate defence of City and their methods last week after the 115 charges landed was a rallying cry.

This was jealous Premier League rivals out to get City, their guilt assumed, he claimed. They have already been cleared by UEFA; this was just another desperate bid by the cosy cartel to bloody the nose of the anti-establishment interlopers. It was a grubby, smearing attempt to take back by whatever means possible what City had won by right on the pitch.

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If the City ship was going down on the back of this, he added defiantly, he would be going with it. He is soldered to the club now. It was rabble-rousing stuff and this was only the version for public consumption. You can imagine the dressing room version.

Tuesday’s apology to Steven Gerrard for dragging him into the tirade did not water the original down one iota. There is no conspiracy, of course, and the case has not been pre-heard. It will be dealt with by an independent judicial panel with City represented by a lawyer who charges £5,000 per hour.

That doesn’t sound too much like the plucky, hard-done-by underdog. If City are guilty they will be punished; if they are innocent they will be found so. Justice will out in the fullness of time.

But for the here and now that doesn’t matter. City, having loped along for much of the season, are suddenly into their stride. Guardiola has found the cattle prod he had been searching for. 

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The Emirates was hostile on Wednesday evening, Arsenal were unbeaten there in the league all season. Win and they would be six points clear with a game in hand. They were hungry alright but City were ravenous.

Befitting of Guardiola, they are one of the most complex of footballing creations but like every team they need an emotional element to drive them. They had it at Arsenal. This was a side that had rediscovered it’s ‘why?’ 

It does not guarantee they will win the Premier League – Arsenal are too good now to simply drift away – but City sent a message in capital letters in the capital in midweek. They are back in kill mode.

And if the charges were indeed cooked up by City’s Premier League rivals just to try to take down a club that had got too big for its boots, as the conspiracy theory goes, then they should be careful what they wish for. The bear has been poked.

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