Manchester City cannot be blamed for doing all they can to keep Pep Guardiola. But a one-year deal feels weirdly desperate from the world’s best-run club.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!There is no mystery surrounding why Manchester City are desperate to keep Pep Guardiola. It boils down to two key factors: he is Pep Guardiola; and no-one else is Pep Guardiola.
The ball will always and forever remain in his court. He will never be pushed and so must eventually walk. But not now. Not yet.
Manchester City outlined their ambition to emulate the Barcelona model in 2012 with the appointments of Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain. Guardiola was a dream, a fantasy they nevertheless sensed could be made reality, someone they approached that year without success and had to wait four more to secure.
More than a decade into their Guardiola obsession, during which everything has been shaped and geared to his specific preferences and idiosyncrasies, Manchester City are doing their utmost to avoid The Kevin Feige Problem: the numbers, praise and accolades are at a historic high, but what comes after the endgame?
One quick glance at a list of the favourites to replace the Spaniard underlines the problem. Eddie Howe and Mikel Arteta are at different ends of the sense-making spectrum as prospective Manchester City managers, but are equally vanishingly unlikely to make the jump. Zinedine Zidane remains an unrequited Premier League pipedream. Roberto De Zerbi seems bizarrely wedded to baggage and inconsistency despite his obvious aptitude.
The three favourites make the long-term view no clearer. Vincent Kompany obviously Knows The Club but a coin flip is needed to decide whether his abysmal Burnley experience or promising Bayern start carries more relevance in this context. Xabi Alonso is an intriguing option yet seems Real Madrid-bound and nevertheless would surely represent the sort of ‘stylistic’ clash which ruled out Ruben Amorim.
It would be interesting to learn what Manchester City’s purported post-Pep succession plan entails beyond hoping Michel comes good and can be plucked from sister club Girona; their place in La Liga’s mid-table with one win in four Champions League games suggests not and his presence in the conversation is predicated entirely on the multi-club ownership framework.
As much as things can change over the course of Guardiola’s 12-month contract extension, if not in the extra year that could be triggered on top of that to carry this beautiful union into 2027, the heirs apparent will come wracked with doubt and uncertainty whenever the baton is passed. Manchester City will obviously and understandably strive to keep their greatest manager in place for as long as possible but there is a strong sense of the can being kicked down the road here.
A one-year extension does not achieve a great deal; echoing Manchester United’s unconvincing show of summer support for Erik ten Hag is a choice yet this feels like an inversion of the trope as the manager agrees to give the club another chance to show him this is all still worth it.
For all the talk of a steadier ship, irresolution no longer hanging over the squad and speculative noise being turned down now Guardiola’s future has been addressed, committing to the end of next season rather than this hardly lifts that cloud for any meaningful period of time. The questions will stop for a matter of months, if indeed at all.
Perhaps that doesn’t matter. Manchester City’s form is awful but an autumnal slump tends to precede a surge in the winter and spring, while injuries are a far bigger current issue than the date of Guardiola’s next sabbatical. His situation needed clarifying either way and any scenario in which he can remain is theoretically the best one. Results and performances improving would be a happy coincidence.
It has just brought into full focus the difficulty of the transition from a dynastic coach, how any possible path is fraught with trepidation but one must inevitably be taken.
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Liverpool encountered the same crossroads in the summer and their start to the season was proof it can be done not seamlessly but brilliantly. They thought outside the box and Arne Slot has built on phenomenal foundations while adding his own touches. He is his own coach, his own man.
Therein lies the pertinent point. Liverpool did not desperately seek a Klopp clone because a) in big 2024 no such thing really exists, and b) there can never be a substitute for the real thing anyway. Neither they nor Slot wanted to recreate his excellence; the desire was to use that work to help establish a new way forward, to harness a successful but obviously flawed team with a fresh outlook.
The case of Manchester City and Guardiola is the precise opposite. There are Pep replicas working throughout Europe but none can hope to match his achievements. Yet with his personal settings hardwired into the Etihad computer in a way Klopp’s never were thanks to those internal power struggles at Anfield, Manchester City face an even tougher task than Liverpool when it comes to moving on.
It is a specific Guardiola problem. He remains the last coach to complete two full seasons at Bayern Munich and the two coaches who immediately followed him at Barcelona only served a year in the post. Neither Soriano nor Begiristain were involved in the process of replacing him as they jumped ship to Manchester City in the same summer; the latter will have no hand in the Manchester City changeover either as Hugo Viana will replace him as sporting director at the end of the season.
That alone is a level of boardroom upheaval to which Guardiola has not really been exposed in eight years and counting at Manchester City, who will be eternally grateful at his decision not to extend the immediate disruption into the dugout.
The hope will be that the Spaniard can help lead their overdue squad rebuild over the next two-and-a-half years before walking into the distance and handing over to the ready-made replacement who emerges from nowhere in the interim. The reality is less fanciful: the Guardiola guarantee is too intoxicating and the thought of life without it too disconcerting that the best-run club over the past decade has desperately grabbed at a fudged solution to avoid it a little longer.
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