Manchester City may be facing a mini slump right now with no win in 4 games, but it was never going to be an overnight job for Guardiola.
City, last season, were a very inconsistent side and it was this inconsistency that nearly saw them slip from the top 4 last season. A man that epitomized this was Raheem Sterling. In fact, inconsistent would be praise… he was an out and out failure in his first season for Manchester City, looking a completely different player to the man who helped Liverpool to within a whisker of the title in 2015.
At the time, £49million looked a great bit of business. He may have been 19, but he looked well on his way to becoming a world beater. But football can be a fickle business and if in May 2016 you had have asked any football fan the length of the country whether 49million still represented good value for Sterling, they would have laughed in your face such was his failure to produce any kind of value. Eventually, he even lost his place in the Manchester City line-up.
But what become evident at the start of the season, was this was largely down to Manuel Pellegrini who failed to get the best out of his big-money buy.
Pep Guardiola is used to working with players like Sterling. Players with pace, that can leave even the best defenders bamboozled as they completely change direction and open a defence. The list is long: Messi, Sanchez, Pedro, Ribery, Robben, Douglas Costa, Coman and what not. Whilst he likes his teams to control possession, he relies on these speedsters to add a turn of pace and capitalise on the space that his team have created.
So it is really no surprise that when he walked through the doors of Manchester City’s headquarters, one of the first names on his mind would have been Raheem Sterling. He has obviously spent a summer working with him, developing him and building his confidence because he started the season in incredible fashion being nominated the Premier League player of the month for August, with 2 goals and 1 assist in 3 appearances.
The most obvious change in Sterling’s play has been his composure. I guess this is a by-product of confidence. But Raheem Sterling has such amazing ball control and low centre of gravity that he can change direction and dribble into space with such ease that he looks like he has so much time on the ball. The game looks easy for him in this form. That is in stark contrast to last season when he was rushing things.
There is one area that he needs to work on still however and that is his finishing. He is small in stature and a lot of the time struggles to get any real power into his shots. But Pep has shown he can develop players and Sterling has plenty of time on his side.
9 – Neymar (10) is the only forward who has created more chances than Raheem Sterling (9) in the Champions League this season. Fireworks. pic.twitter.com/wxs1g5loSa
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) October 19, 2016
So far this season only Neymar with 10, has created more chances than Sterling’s 9. He was the best Manchester City player against Barcelona and really troubled the Catalans. Guardiola will be hoping that his diminutive attacker can catapult the whole team to the same heights.