So @TrueGeordieTG has recently made a video with @thekickofftg about Pep Guardiola, 20 minutes long, and to put it shortly it’s just complete bullshit.

1) So here he’s saying that every good thing Guardiola has done in his career is basically down to inheriting the best teams in the world already. Wouldn’t exactly agree with that point, yes he inherited great players but certainly not great teams.

So the season before Guardiola took over at Barca, they finished trophy-less, 18 points behind first place Real Madrid and 10 points behind second place Villarreal.

On the right we can see the lineup used when Barcelona lost 1-0 to Real Madrid in that season.

Now we see that in Guardiola’s first season in top flight management no less, he won everything, literally the lot, all 4 trophies available to him.

We can see now on the right, the squad he used when his Barca side thrashed Real Madrid 6-2. Vastly different correct?

The main differences were getting rid of some of the best players in the world at that time in Deco and Ronaldinho and putting the majority of his trust in young blood mainly the likes of Iniesta, Pique, Messi, Dani Alves, Busquests. He did not inherit ‘the best team’ in Barca.

He continued this at Barcelona, dominating for years after the club had previously struggled.

Admittedly, the Bayern squad that he inherited was world class, winning all 4 major trophies the season before he joined and it wasn’t like Guardiola rebuilt them to anything major. But he did dominate the country with many new experiments which was still a big achievement.

At City he inherited probably the worst City squad since the 2010 FA Cup win, with the team finishing 4th in one of the worst Premier League seasons ever showing how poor the side was. Within 2 years Pep took City to a league and cup double with a record breaking 100 points.

2) Rory now has his go, saying Guardiola has not made 1 player. For a start what exactly does he mean by this, and secondly, there’s loads. Busquests probably being the most notable that he made from scratch, but it’s a stupid point anyway because who ‘makes’ players??

3) Adam McKola claims ‘Edinson was a replacement for the other goalie he paid a world record fee for’ so in other words apparently the 15m we paid for Bravo was a world record fee and we then replaced him with Edinson. Yeah I’m not sure either really.

4) Here Geordie claims that Peps recruitment has made City worse than they were before Guardiola joined the club, so let’s look.

Here is the lineup used in 2015/16 whenever Man City lost 2-1 to Tottenham.

And here is the lineup in question that was used in the 2-0 loss to Spurs in 2020/21.

Now if we go through man for man and compare the players:

-4/5 of the backline is now better than it was.
-3/6 midfielders and attackers are also now better than they were.

It can be debated loads but as a City fan I know the level that them players were performing at and....

How they compare to the current level of players at City. And there are only a few players that Pep inherited which were performing better than the players he has brought in.

5) The next piece of rubbish to spout from Rory’s mouth is that ‘Pep couldn’t handle Zabaleta’s ego’ I’m genuinely not sure where he has heard this from or what exactly he is on about, once again.

6) The claims now from the boys are that Guardiola has not improved any players in his career.

This may be the stupidest remark of them all. There are very few players who have not improved under Pep and so many who have improved under him.

I’m not going into much detail but at City, the level that he brought the likes of Fernandinho, Silva, Aguero, Otamendi, Stones, Sterling, De Bruyne to was quite remarkable. When some of them players seemed to be ageing or struggling in the PL he unlocked new levels.

Aguero, Kompany, Silva and Fernandinho especially who were all reaching 30 and many believed would begin to decline, Guardiola arguably gave them their prime seasons from 2017-2019. Guardiola’s main ability is improving players in all aspects of the game.

The final thing I want to address is that all the good players Pep had were purchased by Mancini/Pellegrini. Since Txiki Begiristain joined City in 2013, many of the signings were done in the eyes of Guardiola.

Txiki, who is known to be great friends with Pep, was buying players with the idea of them working under Guardiola. So obviously signings of the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Raheem Sterling were more influenced by Guardiola than Pellegrini.

There is a small part of Geordies massive bald head that is constantly occupied by Manchester City and Pep Guardiola living rent free and it’s so obvious he is absolutely rattled by us all