Pep Lijnders and Manchester City represented arguably the most intriguing link-up of the last transfer window. Certainly the most surprising, what with Lijnders being a disciple of City’s great foe Jurgen Klopp. Heavy metal meets Pep Guardiola’s jazz.
City have always been happy enough creating a noise but have preferred to do so at their own pace. Slower than Dutchman Lijnders is accustomed to, slower than he preaches and slower than Guardiola feels City now need to be, amid the changing face of the Premier League.
It took one phone call for the pair to iron out what this double act might look like, Guardiola having sought Klopp’s counsel and permission over the approach.
Guardiola’s assistant Juanma Lillo was on his way out – alongside another coach Inigo Dominguez, with Carlos Vicens taking the Braga manager’s job – and this unlikeliest of marriages heralded a new era upstairs at the City Football Academy, with its pristine white office walls that Guardiola is known to have scribbled ideas on.
This represents a seismic shift, something of a learning process which City are generally not afforded the luxury of given their dominance under Guardiola.
An adjustment not just stylistically and not just in terms of a squad turnover – with nine new signings arriving this calendar year. The changes in personalities of the backroom staff and the make-up of that group are just as pivotal.
It took one phone call between Pep Guardiola and Pep Lijnders to iron out what this double-act might look like
Lijnders brings added ‘intensity and another vision of football’ to the Manchester City coaching staff according to Guardiola
Having spent his nine and a half years in Manchester insisting that the ‘team behind the team’ is a key pillar of the project, Guardiola needed Lijnders, 42, plus other new recruits James French (a set-piece coach from Liverpool) and Kolo Toure (promoted from the Under 18s) to become embedded among the wider staff as well as the players.
Quite a lot of that groundwork was done out in America over the summer, during the ultimately unsuccessful Club World Cup campaign which ended when City were picked off on the counter-attack by Al Hilal in the last 16. The trip was pitched as positive, with sources talking up the ‘vibes’.
But despite all that vibing, Guardiola has been at this long enough to know that three weeks in the Floridian sun isn’t enough. Four days after the opening-day victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers – after which Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher lauded the Lijnders impact, the (even higher) defensive line that would soon be their undoing against Tottenham – City’s staff were bonding again.
The Black Cat, a vibrant bar just down the road from the Catalan restaurant Tast synonymous with City, housed around 50 employees seen as integral to the team’s success for an informal night of darts and shuffleboard.
Guardiola wants everybody involved in these events – the chefs, the baristas, the maintenance staff, the analysis department, the security guards. He places great value in them.
This is a man who, in the months before turning up in 2016, asked for headshots with names of every staff member in the first-team building, so unity is important to him.
The nights together, the organised events, have happened routinely during his tenure. In his first two months, they stayed at Celtic Manor for five days – in between two trips to Swansea City in the League Cup and Premier League – and enjoyed team BBQs.
These were alien concepts to long-standing staff, who were perplexed at being involved in meetings with the squad.
The two Peps celebrate City’s demolition of Wolves on the opening weekend of the season
Lijnders and Jurgen Klopp formed a formidable and successful partnership at Liverpool
In the immediate term, as City figure out their tactical identity, Lijnders, who had a brief and unsuccessful spell last year as manager of Red Bull Salzburg after leaving Liverpool, has been the one to really jive with and Guardiola has clicked with his new No 2 away from the wider group.
It was never more obvious than when, a week after the Black Cat trip, the two men accepted an invite from Neil Warnock to watch the veteran’s one-man show at the Opera House. There was some surprise from Warnock that the offer was taken up, with Guardiola and Lijnders staying until the end and going backstage for a chat.
Guardiola has always been somebody who wants to spend time with his staff away from work, usually over dinner, and with the majority of the old guard now gone – head analyst Carles Planchart also left in the summer – it is time to create new connections. And it is different.
‘It can give us something we didn’t have last season in terms of rhythm, intensity, in terms of another vision of football,’ Guardiola said when describing Lijnders’ appointment. Unlike Lillo and Enzo Maresca before him, the two of them quieter voices to balance out Guardiola’s excitable style, Lijnders is exceptionally similar to the boss. The players have felt that, a hands-on assistant.
‘It’s his energy,’ Rico Lewis tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘You can see so much passion about him, the way he wants to win the ball high up, not allow transitions and counter pressing.
‘Every single thing we do in training is the same idea. He’ll be screaming, so energetic in every single thing we do – it pushes us to be similar to him.’
Guardiola, whose side are back in action against Everton on Saturday, candidly admitted over the summer that success had finally caught up with some players, that it had confused them.
He put that down to the number of injuries they suffered last season, in the catastrophe of finishing third, and suggested it came from a lack of focus. Wounded rivals, particularly Liverpool, pounced. ‘Winning annoys those who don’t win and they wait for you,’ he said.
Erling Haaland looks more energised in his defending from the front since the arrival of Lijnders
Kolo Toure (right) has been promoted from City’s Under 18s to form part of Guardiola’s new-look coaching team
Something had to change. What had worked for years, with Lillo and Vicens integral to countless pieces of silverware, has been refreshed. There has been a shift, more of a relentlessness in messaging – especially during tactical drills – evidenced to a degree by some renewed vigour in defending from the front. Erling Haaland looks energised, displaying additional menace out of possession.
Alongside Toure, French, a day-to-day coach as well as the corner expert, is more visible on the touchline – much like one of his predecessors, Nicolas Jover, is at Arsenal – barking instructions to players.
There has also been flexibility in City’s tactical approach to matches – notably in leaving the Emirates with a point and sometimes dropping the defensive line back slightly, then mixing up how quickly to attack spaces.
Three points behind the leaders, City still feel like an outside bet to reclaim the title – and whether the adjustments positively impact their fortunes will only become clearer later in the season – but Guardiola is still evolving and still putting in the work. And maybe some of it is out of his comfort zone.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .