Neil Humphreys: Pep Guardiola’s latest rant just a distraction
Guardiola's comments about Scudamore shows a manager under pressure at Man City
Pep Guardiola was talking nonsense. He had to know that.
The Manchester City manager considers his comments carefully. Every utterance seems premeditated.
His recent dig at Liverpool's 22-point lead betrayed a man under pressure.
Guardiola is coming to the end of his cycle and needed a distraction, so he picked a daft one.
In a bizarre outburst, the Spaniard intimated that the English Premier League should be just as unhappy with the Reds' dominance as former EPL chief executive Richard Scudamore was two years ago, when Scudamore said City's 19-point title win was bad for the game.
If Scudamore was irritated with City's dominance then, Guardiola suggested, why isn't anyone bothered by Liverpool's annexation now?
Playing the martyr does not suit the manager of the world's richest club.
And pandering to City's rabid conspiracy theorists should be beneath Guardiola.
The Spaniard should not align himself with those guys. Have you seen them on social media?
Their tenuous argument seems to run as follows: City's new money upsets the old establishment. So the old establishment conspires against them.
Everyone from the VAR operators who always back Li-VAR-pool to the pro-Reds media and now a retired EPL executive apparently all oppose City's dominance.
Just think. If a few video assistant referee (VAR) decisions had not gone Liverpool's way and the biased media had been more supportive of City's omnipotence and Scudamore had not made a casual - and entirely fair - comment two years ago, City would have swaggered towards another title.
The current chasm between the two clubs has little to do with Guardiola's failure to replace Vincent Kompany, Aymeric Laporte's long-term injury, John Stones' loss of form and Raheem Sterling and Bernardo Silva's sudden inconsistency.
Nor can City's decline be attributed to Guardiola's reluctance to revitalise an ageing squad, despite his fast, pressing game having a limited shelf life.
Sir Alex Ferguson said that a manager can squeeze four years out of an elite squad before the cycle comes to an end. Guardiola is coming to end of a fourth season of intense pressing with several players in their 30s.
But forget all that.
A few VAR decisions and an anti-City media are the real reasons why Guardiola's domestic season is destined to end in second place.
So he seeks distractions. He throws smoke and mirrors around a side that has lost twice in a row without scoring a goal.
And he plays the martyr, insisting that he will be a failure if he does not win in Europe, like an elderly diva insisting she looks old for her age, desperately waiting for gushing tributes to suggest otherwise.
In a literal sense, Guardiola will not be a failure. Should City defeat Aston Villa in the League Cup final, they will lift their sixth domestic trophy out of the last seven - an absurd achievement.
Later this month, they will take on Real Madrid in the last 16 of the Champions League. They are still on course for a memorable campaign.
But Juergen Klopp reached the previous two Champions League finals, winning the last one, whereas Guardiola was hired to lift that trophy specifically and has not progressed past the quarter-finals.
City built a squad to his exact specifications, even bringing in his old friend Txiki Begiristain to lay the groundwork as the club's director of football. Money was no object. Every available talent was a potential target.
But Klopp simply bought better.
Despite a blank cheque book, Guardiola had made 76 changes to his team in this season's EPL - more than any other manager (Frank Lampard is second with 60 changes. Klopp has made 46).
In comparison, Sheffield United's Chris Wilder is chasing a miraculous Champions League spot after making just 30 changes within a limited squad.
Guardiola's tinkering reportedly angered City players after the Tottenham Hotspur loss. He has not picked the same starting XI in consecutive matches once.
And yet, he still has not satisfactorily replaced Fernandinho, who will be 35 in May, or 31-year-old Sergio Aguero or David Silva, 34, who will leave at the end of the season.
Taking potshots at a former EPL chief executive does not hide the widening holes in an ageing, tiring squad.
Guardiola's domestic work has been exemplary, but his remit was to prevail in Europe and establish a dynasty for the long term. He has not done either.
There is still time. He can achieve something that eluded him at both Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
He can build a second cycle.
But he really needs to ignore the conspiracy theories.
Save the whining and win the Champions League, or his season will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
His campaign will be written off as a failure.
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now
