Victory in the League Cup final is a vital step for a Manchester City side not familiar with success
It didn’t take long for Manchester United fans to stick the knife in after Manchester City’s shock 1-0 defeat to Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup on Monday night. As you might expect, they revelled in Pep Guardiola’s failure, pondering whether the most expensive side in history was worth the money now that a quadruple is out of the question.
This is quite the hyperbolic interpretation of City’s situation, particularly considering that Guardiola’s aesthetic has not only revolutionised the sport but threatens to create the most beautifully sculpted team in English football history.
Nevertheless, those critical of Guardiola’s spending (circa £450 million and counting) will only grown in confidence should Man City continue to stutter in cup competitions. Winning Sunday’s League Cup final won’t satisfy Guardiola’s harshest critics, but it might just calm any jitters inside the Manchester City dressing room – and create the sort of winning mentality, the thirst for silverware, that Jose Mourinho tapped into in 2005, 2015, and 2017.
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A surprising stat: Yaya Toure is the only player in the City squad who has played in a Champions League final. Sergio Aguero has won the Europa League with Atletico Madrid in 2010, but that is the full extent of City’s experience in the latter stages of European competition. Guardiola, meanwhile, is haunted by three successive semi-final exits as Bayern Munich manager that undermine his artistic achievements in Germany (according to the unconverted, anyway).
What’s more, a decade into Sheikh Mansour’s reign City have spent £1.5 billion spent on players and lifted just four major trophies – which, taken together, show City have never dominated, never won with confidence. Following their (late) FA Cup win against Stoke City in 2011, City won the Premier League in 2012 (on goal difference alone thanks to Sergio Aguero’s last-minute winner) and again in 2014 despite being top of the table for just 15 days of the season. Along with a League Cup win in 2016 amid a whimpering season for Manuel Pellegrini, none of City’s silverware under Mansour has suggested dominance – or even self-assurance.
Of course, their unconvincing past success has been shattered in 2017/18 by the ridiculous beauty and ruthlessness of the Guardiola incarnation. And yet that FA Cup 5th round defeat will linger on the palate for months, burrowing into the minds of these City players whose history, individually and as a team, is one of fractured accomplishments. In an era of blood-thirsty media narratives, of a binary emotional spectrum that lurches between crisis and prosperity, anxiety and self-doubt are always lurking just around the corner. If City are knocked out of the Champions League, the implied failure of a single-trophy season could seriously affect the club.
Which is to say Sunday’s final against Arsenal, themselves entangled in a managerial narrative far more angry and polarising than City’s, is unusually significant. In years to come victory at Wembley will be little more than a footnote, but in the moment itself – stood on the podium, confetti flying, trophy aloft – City will celebrate as a dominant force, as truly deserving winners, for the first time since the oil money flooded into Manchester. The feeling of supremacy will stay with these players, laying the foundation for a period of domination under the Catalan’s leadership.
For City and Guardiola, this is just the beginning. A record points haul in the Premier League awaits, and as favourites to win the Champions League Manchester City’s 2017/18 season could yet be one of the most spectacular in English history – with or without a League Cup winners medal tagged on for good measure.
But football is constantly in flux, is forever on the precipice of sudden change, and right now City have an uneasy relationship with success. An emphatic first trophy under Guardiola would be a crucial step to instilling a sense of belonging – and a tentative answer to those United fans doubting the value of Guardiola’s revolution in Manchester.
