Pep: I would have been sacked at Barca or Bayern.

He clearly likes it here & wants to be successful, yes his comments occasionally don't come out too well - but I think it's pretty obvious his intent wasn't to call City a small club, and he's in no way wrong in saying Bayern/Barca are bigger clubs (unless we're deluding ourselves on here). He seems appreciative that he's got a strong backing from the board to try & create something here that we've never really had (e.g. dominate the league, or winning the CL).

As long as he can deliver good, successful football in his tenancy here then he'll be doing alright.
 
Lancet Fluke said:
Lot of fuss about not much in many ways. Certainly nothing wrong with his comment about Bayern and Barca. But his further comment about "a big club" could have been phrased better, it doesn't particularly bother me but stuff like that is always going to piss some fans off and is going to give the media something else negative to jump on. Whilst some people are probably blowing it out of proportion, ultimately it was just an unnecessary thing for him to say and wasn't helpful. English is not his first language though which also should be taken into account.
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What is a big club? Lots of ways you can measure it but what ever way you do we are still a bit behind the elite European clubs in playing terms at least.
A better question to ask Pep would be does he think he will be sacked next May if he finds himself in the same position. My view is that unless he changes his approach
which is unlikely he will fall short again. Even with 4 or 5 additions we will still be way off the pace in Europe and domestically we are unlikely to gather the extra points we need to win the league. Remember the competition are not going to stand still and let us race ahead and the top clubs will be confident that they can subdue our attacks and pick us off on the break. Perhaps if he gets a third year and another pot of money he can get in enough quality to play his system successfully. Time will tell.
 
mekonmcfc said:
you dont think we've underachieved ? Even Pep thinks we have, so a bit of a strange question. You must be the only fan that thinks this season is a success
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Of course we've underachieved but I don't think we've been anywhere near as bad as some of the hyperbole on here.

Massively underachieved is a bold statement when we're favourites to finish 3rd.

At the start of the season I was hoping for more but I also acknowledged that Chelsea and United were going to be a lot stronger and the rest of our rivals had the consistency of their managers and playing style. Pep coming in was no overnight fix and was always going to take time.

At the start of the season I'd have taken a top 4 finish and a trophy. If it wasn't for incompetent officials at Wembley then we'd still be in with a shout of that.
 
Ric said:
To be honest, as much as anything I think he was praising the club for their patience and giving him time to get it right, which he might not have been afforded at his previous clubs.
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I think most rational people would see that that was what he was trying to say. Others would prefer to use it as a stick to beat him with.
 
Father Paul said:
What is a big club? Lots of ways you can measure it but what ever way you do we are still a bit behind the elite European clubs in playing terms at least.
A better question to ask Pep would be does he think he will be sacked next May if he finds himself in the same position. My view is that unless he changes his approach
which is unlikely he will fall short again. Even with 4 or 5 additions we will still be way off the pace in Europe and domestically we are unlikely to gather the extra points we need to win the league. Remember the competition are not going to stand still and let us race ahead and the top clubs will be confident that they can subdue our attacks and pick us off on the break. Perhaps if he gets a third year and another pot of money he can get in enough quality to play his system successfully. Time will tell.
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Good post,a few times now pep has talked about being sacked if not doing a good job,he also talked about retiring which then was put down as translation problems,I'm not wanting to be a doom and gloom merchant but this is a large scale rebuild and with no guarantee of success is pep himself having doubts ..
 
Ric said:
Not really sure what the fuss is about, to be honest. It's true that the manager of Bayern or Barca would be sacked for finishing 3rd or 4th. The clubs and leagues are completely different though, so it's comparing apples and oranges. He could've worded it better, but some of the reactions are ridiculous. You almost get the feeling that some City fans almost want him to fail, just so they can say "I told you so".
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You're right in regards to the way he words things but I think a lot of that is to do with poor translation.

His conversational English isn't very strong and the way some of his comments aren't worded can detract from the point he is making.

For example, there was a comment where he said that City were a small club and had no long-term history (or something along those lines). Anyone with a ounce of logic could interpret that he was essentially saying that we don't have a long tradition of winning things like Barca and Bayern and as a result are not yet an elite club. A statement that the majority of all football fans in the world would agree with.

However, some people seem to concentrate on the sensationalist quote and ignore the context.
 
Father Paul said:
What is a big club? Lots of ways you can measure it but what ever way you do we are still a bit behind the elite European clubs in playing terms at least.
A better question to ask Pep would be does he think he will be sacked next May if he finds himself in the same position. My view is that unless he changes his approach
which is unlikely he will fall short again. Even with 4 or 5 additions we will still be way off the pace in Europe and domestically we are unlikely to gather the extra points we need to win the league. Remember the competition are not going to stand still and let us race ahead and the top clubs will be confident that they can subdue our attacks and pick us off on the break. Perhaps if he gets a third year and another pot of money he can get in enough quality to play his system successfully. Time will tell.
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Personally, I tend to agree with most of what you say, all we can do is wait and see. Hopefully we are both wrong. In terms of "what is a big club", I find the whole debate tedious and pointless. But regardless, whether he believes we are a truly small club or whether it has been slightly taken out of context (I.E. he was obviously just saying we aren't as big as Bayern or Barca which is fine because it's clearly true), it would probably be better if our manager didn't say, "if I was at a big club" at press conferences.
 
I would like to point out that some of those defending Pep have accused other blues of ikkle cittyitis in the past for example questioning whether we could sign Messi.
 
No problem with his comments, and in reality we are not yet close to sitting at the same table with the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern. Paul Lake was on the radio this morning and basically eluded to the same issue - in terms of being recognized as a big club, we wont until we win the champions league as he states that this is what other people look at both domestically and in Europe.

We haven't dominated domestically but it is about building up a succession of bringing trophies in to the club, if and I hope we do, we need to capture the champions league trophy
 
cadds92 said:


He may be right compared to Barca and Bayern , but he is pretty much calling us a small club here.

One of Pep's weaknesses is he doesn't seem to have much respect for us fans in my opinion.

Constantly calling us out on attendance and sometimes atmosphere if I remember correctly.
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He's right though.

Yes, we may well have bridged the gap in terms of competing with them and earning money but these bigger clubs have won 50+ trophies. Madrid have won nearly as many European Cups as we have major honours full stop. When you've only ever been involved with that level of club like Barcelona and Bayern you'd feel a marked difference coming to City. If he thinks they are the big clubs then we aren't a big club. We're going in the right direction to become one (or we were before we started going backwards after 2014) but we aren't one of them.

If Kasper Schemiechel came out after the game and said Leicester were as big as us because they won the league last season and got further in Europe than us we'd piss ourselves. That's what these big clubs would think about us coming out and saying we're one of them because we've won a few trophies of late and signed some top players. We've got decades to go before we're one of the big clubs Guardiola talks of.
 
A bit of a non-story really. Not winning the league at Bayern and not winning it at City are hardly comparable. You'd have to be pretty incompetent to not win it at Bayern when you look at what he took over and their dominance in that league. Winning the PL with an aging and ill-balanced squad is a whole different level of difficulty.
 
If we'd won the league 27 times and won it for the last 5 seasons on the bounce and he had us in 3rd of 4th, we'd have sacked him already.
 
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