I am a Pep fan and want the guy to do well. It goes without saying that the quality of football we've seen over his tenure has been the best football we've ever seen - not just us, but any fan of English football in all of it's history. He wants to create the greatest football team ever made and in the Fourmidables/Centurians he came closer than anyone else has ever done in England.
So, I should be pleased he's signed an extension but it feels non-committal if I'm honest. It's not a long extension and is hard to see how he can rebuild/tweak the team unless we're going to blow the finances apart. Or sign one of the best players in the world. That means in January and in summer we're going to stick 2 fingers right up at UEFA. If not, I don't know what we will do.
I can only assume that the board and Pep are certain that Messi is coming either in January or at the end of the season. It feels as if the the board and Pep have come to the conclusion that the only way we can win the CL is if Pep has Messi. It's that simple. I've seen enough of that rotten competition to know that you need luck, bribery, VAR to look the other way, a competent ref, decent fixtures before and after the game, and even more luck than a multiple national lottery winner. It just feels like the club are throwing the dice on Pep/Messi for 2 seasons. I don't think it will work.
The whole Messi thing is getting silly. He is obviously one of the best players in the world, but at 33 he will soon be retired. Does he have the determination to prove to everyone he can do it in England when he's never left Spain? We are making a huge gamble on a player who has little time left - and he will leave when Pep does. I would love to have seen him at City, but the energy and time we seem to spend on him is ridiculous. It's not like we're signing him when he's had a great send off at Barcelona - we're likely to be signing an unhappy player. I wish we could put the same effort into Haaland, Mbappe etc.
The club just feels listless at the moment, we're neither one thing or another. The manager signs for another couple of years, the team look tired and short of confidence and have little chance of winning the league this year. We look no better prepared to win the CL this year either, if anything we've gone backwards. We aren't learning and we've stopped progressing. This isn't supposed to happen but the league does not lie and we look like a collection of talented players with no idea on what to do.
Pep has been an OUTSTANDING manager and deserves all the praise he gets. But I do feel that it should have been a 4/5 year extension. If this year is a washout - as it's looking at the moment - then it is difficult to see how we become a 80+ points team next season. Given how much the club want the CL, we look no closer to winning it - or know what to do - than we did under Mancini all them years ago.
Pep probably knows, deep down, what to do and I simply don't believe he's really happy playing a right back at left back, picking a 33 year old injury prone striker, hoping his talismanic 35 year old central midfielder is ok etc. He knows what a top class player is like, he's seen plenty in his career and there's not a chance in hell he thinks our squad is good enough. I do think he will get it right again, but I wish he - and the club - had shown more intent and given him a much longer contract.
