Pep Guardiola‘s team is winning against teams that are defending in numbers, playing deep mostly in their own half, and looking to hit City on the break.
The perpetually sycophantic British media in their usual ilk are praising him, his loyalists have continued their usual hypocritical hype of him being a great tactician.
Not that Pep hadn’t deserve every of the plaudits he’s received, after all, his side are ruthlessly dispatching their opponents with an absolutely fantastic display of subliminal, silky and scintillating football show to such a degree that you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a well-practiced circus.
The problem however starts when some few intelligent managers employ the same ‘park the bus’ approach with a level of effectiveness that City obviously lacked last season (in matches against teams like Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton, Leicester and Tottenham Hotspur).
As if by default, Guardiola‘s disciples would begin to raise eyebrows, destructively castigate the opponent’s style as ‘negative football’ (whatever that means this days), lampoon the manager that has successfully masterminded such a great tactic with impressive degree of efficiency.
Therefore, on the flip side, while Pep is richly deserving of the hyperbolic compliments he’s presently receiving, I hope we can all agree that he should merit the criticisms he’d get when his side would look tactically clueless on how to break down an immovably impregnable juggernaut that Chelsea and most Jose Mourinho teams would kindly accept as a compliment.
I hope even his staunchest fan can eat the humble pie, accept that Pep just couldn’t deploy a plan to break them down, or stop the opponent’s explosively marauding counterattacks, and praise the opposition for being prudent with the little portion of ball possession they can muster by outscoring the so called Tiki Taka positive football.
I refer to them as hypocrites because of their double standards. When Pep wallops defensive teams, nobody criticize those teams as negative, and Pep becomes a genius.
The story however changes when Pep team loses against another team that can execute such defensive game plan very well and consequently end up beating Pep. Rather than applaud such brave and effective display from the team, we start hearing terms (that only exists in their football dictionary) like ‘negative football’, ‘park the bus’ e.t.c whereas the end should justify the means.
If Pep is so good, he should deploy a means to break defensive teams down and stop moaning as if it’s easy to defend against an armor of continuous rampaging attack upon attacks.
Remember if a team was so defensive, it should not outscore the so attacking one. Whatever is good for the goose should be good for the gander. #Jidespeaks #Simplyblunt
This articles is written by Jide Johnson Leoso and first published on his Facebook Page: