Everyone still confident there's not something going on off the field? They seem absolutely rocked to me.

It would be a courtesy if City reacted and clawed a couple of points off Liverpool.

can't fly that high without getting burnt. the universe is exacting its price.

Here’s the video. It’s weird. Get this cat a shrink

Tearing yourself up like that is fuckin weird, no two ways about it. I mean, look at the state of his head! I mean, sure, he didn't mean to draw blood, but it's still not healthy behavior. The guy needs to chill the fuck out, it's only football. That people are calling his "joke" insensitive is also weird, because it suggests his behavior is somehow normal or unconcerning. Skeeves me out.

    Was the head picture real? I assumed it was AI generated scratches. In reality he just had that nick on his nose, right?

      Coombs he wins like a sadist. Of course there's something wrong with him.

        flobaba I was told they were real, but I don't really know

          It'd be good for Guardiola longer term to experience a period of failure and difficulty. I pray he has that good fortune.

            daredevil I'm with you. I have a lot of respect for the impact that Pep has had on the game. He's given us a long sustained era of football built on his principles, with other managers employing his approaches (if not his budget). He's also developed a lot of managers - much more than either Wenger or Red Nose did in the process.

            Manchester City sometimes put me to sleep. But that's just a style preference. I can appreciate that they are superb while not as swashbuckling as the football I am drawn to. Pep's influence and impact though is hard to ignore.

              He got most of his ideas from Cruijff. Let him scratch. Grown ass millionaire cheat who comes to a presser looking like my 5 month old son when I forget to clip his nails and put gloves on his hands.

                Gurgen everything builds on a precedent. While Cruyff gave us Total Football, Guardiola made several adaptations around it

                • positional play / juego de posicion where players occupied much more structured zones than before
                • tactical flexibility such as the inverted fullback, false nine, and hybrid formations
                • rapid counter pressing through swarms (the 5 second rule)
                • his hypnotic football which is actually more about destabilising defenses during possession with rotational movement, to retain the ball and then create fractures in defense
                • goalkeeper as a playmaker. He’s the first guy to truly integrate the goalie as a part of play.
                • and then taking advantage of modern trends such as improved data science to enhance the above.

                So yes, he took a template that Cruyff had - but he made significant changes to it which have had reverberating impacts on the modern game. I don’t think anyone comes close this century in terms of re-shaping the game.

                  Many of the things you list existed decades before he first managed a game. He is a fantastic manager but he has never managed a club in trouble, so we will never know how good he really is.