Pep Guardiola Returning David Silva to His Best Is Good News for Manchester City

Even the Manchester City fans, amid the excitement of Pep Guardiola’s appointment, weren’t expecting this.

Three games in eight days have yielded three wins. More promising than the results, though, is City’s improving style of play. Quick, intense, incisive and brilliantly off-the-cuff—a month into the job, Guardiola is having an obvious effect.

The City fans were prepared to wait for Guardiola’s ideas to take hold. There’s plenty of scope for further improvement, but it’s a case of so far, so good.

A number of players embody the improvements, most obviously Raheem Sterling—but it’s perhaps David Silva’s renaissance that will please City fans the most.

Up until the October international break last season, Silva’s stock with the club’s supporters was about as high as it could be. There were plenty of discussions both online and at matches about whether he was the greatest player in City’s history.

For years, Colin Bell, who won a league title, an FA Cup, two League Cups and a European Cup Winners’ Cup during a distinguished 14-year spell at City, had unanimously been given that honour. In a similar way to how The Beatles are widely considered the finest band in the history of music, the opinion was so overwhelmingly in Bell’s favour that no one seemingly had a chance of taking the title from him.

But Silva is a special player, and even supporters from Bell’s generation were being to soften their stances. The Spaniard, who arrived at City just days after becoming a World Cup winner, had been a constant source of brilliance, a player who dictated games and set the tempo.

Whereas Sergio Aguero has often determined how many goals City win by, Silva has been the key to whether they win the game at all.

“If fans are suggesting I might be the best City player they have seen, then of course I am honoured by that,” he said back in 2014, per Simon Mullock of the Mirror:

I have always felt welcome, wanted, appreciated by the supporters at City and that’s why I am still here.

I know this club had great players who are still remembered from the last team that won the title, and we also have great players here today.

But the important thing for me is playing football as well as I can.

But his injury on international duty 10 months ago had a damaging effect on his performances last season. The ankle pain never really subsided. It affected his movement and comfort on the pitch. By the end of the season, Manuel Pellegrini was resting him at least once a week in an attempt to see him play somewhere close to his best in the …

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