Best Way for Pep Guardiola to Silence Doubters Is to Show Flexibility

“I want to play the football I feel,” Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said after Saturday’s defeat to Leicester City.

He has issued similar statements all season. After the draw against Everton in October, he was in mock-apologetic mode. “This is who I am,” he said. “This is what I believe. I’m sorry.”

There he stands. He can’t do it any other way.

Which is all fine and noble and laudable. His philosophy has been highly successful, bringing six league titles and two Champions Leagues in seven seasons in management while producing some of the most startling and beautiful football the world has known. If it takes stubbornness, iron will and inflexibility to achieve that, so be it. Great men are rarely easy; vision comes at a cost.

Manchester City are basking in the glow of victory once again 🌝 pic.twitter.com/F6vllReOWh

— Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) December 14, 2016

But none of that can disguise the fact that even after Wednesday’s slightly edgy 2-0 win over Watford, City have won just five of their past 16 games in all competitions, or that they lost 4-2 to Leicester on Saturday—a side that had lost its previous game, to Sunderland, and would lose its next game, to Bournemouth.

But it wasn’t just the defeat; it was the manner of the defeat. Whether it was arrogance, complacency or a terrible misjudgement, playing a high line opened the door for Jamie Vardy in a way it hadn’t been opened for about a year. Leicester, it seemed, had finally found themselves up against a side that had underestimated them again.

All of that is self-evident. City played high, took a strange and seemingly needless risk and were punished. Aleksandar Kolarov and Bacary Sagna looked uncomfortable in their roles. It wasn’t clear what Pablo Zabaleta had been asked to do in his roving right-back-cum-holding midfielder duties.

Goalkeeper Claudio Bravo again looked suspect—not only for the second goal, when he got his hand to Andy King’s shot but couldn’t keep it out, but also for the fourth, when he almost ushered Vardy past him. All judgements in football are partly subjective, but most of that is hard to deny.

But it’s not as simple as that. Guardiola is an ideologue, and as such, he has believers and sceptics. There is a trend in football that sees debates turn into …

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