Pep Guardiola has managed Manchester City in 500 games. “That period feels like 500 months,” he said, and he wasn’t referring to the first 486 of those matches. It was two months of trauma that felt never-ending, 60 days that felt like decades to Guardiola, that gave him a taste of what it is to be like other managers, to lose nine times in 13 outings.
It has, he says, made him more grateful for the good times. “Maybe that period will make you realise how nice it was and hopefully we can come back,” he said after the first step in a revival was to grind out a 2-0 win at Leicester. “Maybe we will not be what we were but closer than now.”
