PEP TALK
Josep Guardiola – or Pep as he’s known to his enemies and friends – rarely bothers turning up for media engagements. Sure, he’s there in body, and his gums occasionally flap, but his head is somewhere else – usually on a training ground, plotting how to get a nine-on-one overload in central midfield. Football Daily assumed today would be no different, and that Guardiola – obliged to talk to the media before City’s 47-0 win over Aston Villa on Sunday – would absent-mindedly dead-bat questions about Manchester City’s alleged contempt for the concept of fair competition. Instead, he turned into Josep Mourinho.
Guardiola swung haymakers in all directions; he presented one of the world’s richest clubs as a noble, put-upon underdog; and he established a siege mentality with such coruscating precision that Football Daily instantly bet the farm on City winning the Premier League this season. It’s a risky tactic, because he’ll be eating mea culpas for the rest of his natural-born days if City are found guilty, but in the short-term it felt like a cynically brilliant response to unprecedented adversity. At times Pep looked like he was auditioning to play Don Logan in the upcoming $exy Beast TV series, but in reality his performance was almost entirely calculated. “My first thought is that we have already been condemned,” began Guardiola. “What’s happening right now … is the same as what happened with Uefa [in 2020] … We are lucky we live in a marvellous country and society where everyone is innocent until proven guilty. We didn’t have this opportunity, we are already sentenced, and ‘tough’.”
Guardiola didn’t so much double down on City’s innocence as empty a bulging sack of £50 notes in front of a startled croupier. Then he turned his attention to his fellow players, disdainfully naming the nine clubs who supported City’s proposed ban from Big Cup in 2020: Arsenal, Burnley (no Vinny, don’t shoot!), Chelsea, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle, Tottenham and Wolves. “Like Julius Caesar, in this world there are not enemies or friends, just interest,” he cooed. “They wanted to take [the Big Cup position] we won on the pitch. This is the same.” He went on, pointedly waving a magnifying glass towards page 68 of the 2017-18 accounts for [don’t you dare mention an actual club you dolt – Football Daily Lawyers]: “Be careful, be careful in the future as there’s a lot of clubs that have been accused like we have without being innocent, who knows what will happen in the future?
“They say … you have to go to League One, or League Two or maybe the Conference? We have already been in the lower divisions. We will be back there – not a problem, just in case. We will call Paul D1ckov and Mike Summerbee and we will be back.” Mercifully for those with a 5pm deadline, Guardiola stopped just short of establishing City’s lower-league bona fides by reading out the full names and addresses of the 3,007 fans who watched City lose at home to Mansfield in the 1998-99 Auto Windscreens Shield. “We are going to defend ourselves, like we did in the Uefa situation.” Pep’s monologue wouldn’t satisfy every factchecker – he said City were completely innocent in the Uefa case, which isn’t strictly true – but it energised 100% of the only group he really cares about: City’s fanbase. Even Liam Gallagher felt the urgent need to inform his 3.6m Social Media Disgrace Twitter followers that a) Pep was God, b) City were champions and c) eff y’all LG x. “I’m not moving from this seat, I can assure you,” concluded Guardiola. “Now more than ever I want to stay here.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I could have stayed in a mining community, been a PE teacher and had a nice life, married a nice Welsh girl. Beautiful. I don’t. I want to test myself on every level … and that’s nothing against Welsh women. But I want to test myself” – Nathan Jones may be testing himself at something other than being manager of Southampton if they lose again on Saturday in a crunch game with Wolves.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
For those of us from Sussex, the A22 doesn’t conjure up a €uropean $uper £eague (yesterday’s Football Daily), rather a meandering, single-carriageway A-road passing the British wildlife centre and the Church of the Latter-Day saints complex on the way to Eastbourne. Anyway, as a Brighton and Hove Albion supporter, we would be happy to see the ‘Big Six’ do one to a €$£ and let the rest of us get on with the real football” – Mark Pritchard.
In contradiction to Richard Hirst’s assertion (yesterday’s Football Daily letters), I have always assumed that bringing the backroom staff with you as a manager was essentially bringing the brains of the operation and the manager was just the name that got the role. So can we also have stats on how managers have performed when their assistants have moved on to the big job elsewhere?” – Nick Livesey.
You’ve done it now, with that link to the ancient crap grounds article (yesterday’s Memory Lane, full email edition). Having only just put a pin in the ‘I once played football with a bass player’ jamboree, cue 1,057 letters complaining about the chips at Harrogate Town or whatever. For the record, I loved every football ground I’ve been in, because I just love being in a football ground” – Jon Millard.
I’m glad Football Daily has moved on from letters about playing football with celebrities. I was too bad a footballer to even have made the school team back-up players, never mind share the field with any celebs. I did, however, own a pair of George Best football boots that I could show off” – Richard Hanning.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Mark Pritchard.
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