According to Graeme Souness, Josep Guardiola has imitated a classic Sir Alex Ferguson strategy as Manchester City tries to catch up to Arsenal. The legendary player for Liverpool claims that the City manager’s handling of Kevin De Bruyne is comparable to what his fellow Scot did at Manchester United.
De Bruyne recently received criticism from Josep Guardiola, who said the Belgian player needed to improve. He claimed that after being excluded from his squad on a few recent instances, he must once more start doing the basic things.
Josep Guardiola also challenged Erling Haaland to be “better”. In retaliation, the Norwegian scored five goals against RB Leipzig, and for the second leg of their Champions League round of 16 match, De Bruyne was again in excellent form.
Souness thinks Josep Guardiola is deliberately pushing his best players harder in order to raise the bar for everyone else on the team. According to him, Ferguson used to do that at United with players like David Beckham and Ryan Giggs.
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Is Josep Guardiola raising the bar for his players?
Souness wrote in the Mail: “De Bruyne has been City’s best player for the last five years. Yet this season he hasn’t played in some important games.”
“I was at the one City lost at Spurs in February, for example, and he didn’t start that day. Strange. And now Josep Guardiola has dug him out a little in public. This week he said De Bruyne had to get back to doing the simple things well.”
“I have my theories about why this may have happened. It could be part of a deliberate tactic aimed at motivating the whole squad.”
“Someone told me that Sir Alex Ferguson used to do this with Ryan Giggs. He would deliberately pick on him and sometimes David Beckham in front of the other Manchester United players.”
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