Bielsa said yesterday that Pep Guardiola ruined football, because he's so good and he had so much success that teams resorted to horrendous football in order to counter people adopting Pep's tacitcs.
I'm not sure if that's 100% true or just Bielsa going over the top in complimenting his friend, but I'm really starting to think Pep has ruined the Manchester City fan base.
I know that the Match thread and twitter are not necessarily 100% accurate portrayals of the fanbase but I seriously don't think many people on here actually enjoy football anymore. The levels of anger and angst that starts when the team sheet is announced and doesn't disappear unless we are 4-0 up is just unbearable.
Both our strikers are injured! Someone's going to have to play out of position. I've not been Mahrez's biggest fan over the 3 years he's been here but fucking hell guys he's not shit, he doesn't need to "Go back to North Africa" FFS because he didn't hold the ball up. He put a massive shift in, was the first one legging it back to defend just before he came off. The players pressed like lunatics in the first 30 minutes and maybe we're not fit enough to do that for the whole game yet because we had no preseason, but it showed the players are committed to Pep's football 100%.
We had it exceptionally easy for a couple of seasons, 198 points has never been done before, and won't be done again, but even in that centurions season we dropped points in 1/6 games. We had long spells where we weren't winning games. I don't remember there being so much animosity towards the players and Pep, I don't remember this sense of entitlement to an easy win and anything else is a travesty requiring players lined up against the wall or Pep getting replaced.
Leeds were really good. We saw that when the (apparently on a compeltely different plane to us) Liverpool side conceded 3 and could have conceded many more. BIelsa is an exceptional coach, Leeds will finish in the top 10 and take a few more scalps. They will take away all structure from the game and make it end to end madness against a lot of teams.
Unfortunately, in an absolute downpour, Ederson, who was excellent mostly, made 3 or 4 great saves and was the 2nd best keeper in the league at claiming crosses and corners last season made a mistake. They scored, we dropped a couple of points, it happens. Sterling should have ended the game, that's annoying but he is what he is, he helps us out a lot more than he hurts us.
Pep isn't upset post match, he's laughing and smiling. He wants the title more than anyone posting on here, he works harder for Manchester City than anyone, and he knows with 6 players out, against a really good side, no preseason, in an insane condensed season, sometimes you're going to drop a couple of points.
I'm not sure how to make this a more succinct point, but I just think quite a lot of our fans just need to fucking relax and stop living with this mindset where we have to win every single game we play while looking world class from 1-11 and having put the game to bed inside half an hour.
I'm sure the usual brigade will turn up and tell me to fuck off for being a happy clapper, but christ, in 2020, with a pandemic keeping us cooped up, if you're frothing at the mouth with anger from the line up being released on twitter to the full time whistle then I'm not sure what the point is.
