"It used to be good didn't it?"
This is the question I have kept asking myself since the news broke that Pep Guardiola will be leaving City at the end of the 2025/26 season. It's almost like I've completely forgotten a world before Pep was our manager.
Now, obviously, I do remember a time before Pep.
For City fans of a certain vintage, who we used to be and our attitudes in a previous life haven't really gone. I'm actually looking on in envy at united fans at the moment as they try and make a big thing about the FA Youth Cup Final location and the impact of Casemiro's career on the league, it feels so familiar to when I was about 3 stone lighter and had no greys in my beard and hair. Who the club were pre-takeover still clings to me and will do as long as I live, there were 8 years between the takeover and Pep becoming manager which is a significant time but it felt a bit alien to me as I tried to process the news.
I drove down to Bournemouth on Tuesday afternoon on my own, and without sounding like a complete narcissist, I had a re-listen to my appearance on my friend Murd's podcast "Maybe in another generation" where we chatted for an hour about the season under Sven. I needed something to listen to to be reminded of the joy I felt watching City before Pep came and gave us a decade of, well, everything. All the trophies, how he completely changed the way football is played in England, and of course an unrivalled winning mentality.
After listening to the podcast, my mind raced forward to the next few years after the 2007/08 season. Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta, Roberto Mancini, Carlos Tevez, David Silva, Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero. United and Stoke at Wembley, Newcastle away, 93:20, Sunderland at Wembley, Yaya's run and goal at home to Villa. Don't these times fill your eyes. It was all before Pep and it was the best days of my life. It dawns on me that I have been so incredibly lucky to follow this club, and although what is next will no doubt be a step down, now is a good time to reflect on the glory of what we've seen.
I felt for awhile in the build up to the Bournemouth game with the rumours getting louder that Pep could be calling it a day that there is some symmetry to Pep's time at City. Without wishing to completely write off his first 12 months at the club as forgettable, when I ask myself the question of "where did you felt it really all began with Pep?" I think back to a hot August bank holiday game at Bournemouth, this time in 2017, the third game of Pep's second season. Not a particularly memorable game overall but a moment at the end which has stuck by me as Raheem Sterling lifted the ball in to the back of the net in the 97th minute to give City a 2-1 last gasp winner. Sterling was sent off for over celebrating, Aguero confronted a heavy handed policeman, I got back to my car near the away end at the Vitality Stadium still out of breath and sweating from the wild celebrations. 9 years later, it almost felt fitting that Pep's last away game and the end of his final title charge was at the same place, another late late goal but this time not enough to keep the title race alive.
I've been avoiding looking online for much of today. Unfortunately like many I'm wired into forever craving the dopamine fix of doom scrolling. (I actually know two proper Arsenal fans, one in particular is a very close mate of mine and he has a season ticket - on a human level I am happy for him, I should probably warn him about that numbing realisation that "football never stops" when next season fixtures come out in about 3 weeks.) This craving for complete strangers to rage bait me is absolutely mental. I want to have the equivalent of that gobshite with his water bottle at Stamford Bridge torturing me. I'm quite happy to point the finger at the bottle man, Ollie Holt breaking the news about Pep going and City wearing a silver kit away to teams that don't wear sky blue as the reasons why we fell short this season.
The news coming through about Pep leaving was worse than losing the league. It wasn't our league to lose obviously, it was Liverpool's title previously, and despite being top for a few days in April on goal difference, it never fully felt like we were in charge this season. I remember saying to mates back in December that it felt a lot to me like the 2014/15 season where we ended up about 10 points behind Chelsea - we got close to them in January of that season but the Mourinho 2.0 team with Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas and Eden Hazard were much better than City that season. Really, this Arsenal team should have absolutely pissed it - that week where we lost at Old Trafford and Bodo in January re-emphasised how far off we were from being a top team at the time. No doubt we have improved a lot in that time and Arsenal kept leaving the door open for us, which is probably why this won't be remembered as one of the better Premier League winning teams regardless of how they get on in the Champions League final.
I don't want to sound overly dramatic but the news that Pep was going is something I can only compare to a break up. I could barely sleep on Monday night, it was the last thing I thought about on Monday night and the first thought on Tuesday morning. I drifted through work on Tuesday morning before I set off to Bournemouth with one headphone in listening to miserable music. "Danger Keep Away" by Slipknot probably fitting as I avoided conversation with any colleague. All those different emotions you hear so much about attached to loss or grief travel through my body. It sounds extreme to compare it to the lyric in "Someone Great" by LCD Soundsystem where James Murphy sings about grief, 'nothing can prepare you for it', but although we were expecting it, it still feels awful that it's over. It's bad enough losing Bernardo and Stones, two players who had the strongest connection to the fanbase since the likes of Kompany and Zabaleta.
Fortunately, stood about chatting with a collection of City fans before the Bournemouth game was really rational and positive. I can still feel the anger and confusion which wrapped around Wembley in May 2013 when it was leaked the night before the FA Cup final that Mancini would be sacked and Pellegrini would takeover. Manuel Pellegrini, who had previously managed Real Madrid, was viewed in such a negative way, I did wonder how other fans would react to not only Pep going but who is likely to replace him - a good time as ever to remember that most match going fans are pretty normal people and not toys out the pram morons that you find online.
In the next few days I'm sure there will be plenty of articles, videos and interviews given about Pep, his time at the club and his legacy in English football. I'm not great at articulating tactics and I don't watch enough football down the pyramid to speak with any authority on how Pep has influenced the game. But what I can do as a Manchester City fan since the 90s, who's travelled all over England and Europe (and Jeddah!) watching the team is tell you that he's created memories I'll never forget, he's produced teams that will be spoken about forever and he's broken records which were unthinkable.
We used to get told that City cannot be considered a great team until they've achieved something unique. 100 points, domestic treble, continental treble and 4 league wins in a row. He made Fabian Delph the best left back in the league, he said in a press conference that "City cannot be blamed for Steven Gerrard slippery", he turned up to Heaton Park wearing a City shirt for the Oasis gig.
I love him, I always will do and I'm absolutely devastated he's going. We have been so, so lucky guys.
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