Pep Guardiola, Sir Alex Ferguson and the art of the rebuild as Man Utd and Man City aim to come back stronger

The Premier League’s elite clubs are rebuilding.

This summer has seen the so-called Big Six spend in excess of £1bn between them on new signings. With several weeks of the transfer window still to go, the numbers will continue to rise.

Liverpool are leading the way as they aim to consolidate their Premier League title win but Chelsea are close to their total for money spent, with Arsenal, Manchester City, and Manchester United next on the list respectively, and Spurs not far behind them.

There is particular intrigue around the Manchester clubs.

City recorded their lowest points total under Pep Guardiola in a trophyless campaign last term. United plumbed far greater depths as they finished 15th and also failed to win silverware.

So, are they on track to bounce back and enjoy the success their fans crave in the new season? Or is the road to the top longer? Much will depend on whether they can master the art of the rebuild, a process Sir Alex Ferguson once said he believed could take up to four years.

“I don’t think that will ever be the case again,” says Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville. “I honestly don’t think you’re going to get those four or five years as a manager now. You’re going to have to be successful along the way. It’s very different to how it was 20 years ago.”

Pep Guardiola and Manchester City have of course been here before.

How they would love a repeat of the successful rebuild overseen early in his tenure following his arrival from Bayern Munich, when City recovered from a difficult first campaign, like the one they have just had, to win the first of many titles in 2017/18.

“They are one of the exceptions to that four-year rule,” says Neville.

“Jose Mourinho came into Chelsea and won their first league title in a long, long time in his first season, creating a kind of unity straight away. Pep Guardiola got a great side that won the title in the space of two years at Manchester City.”

Neville also mentions Arne Slot’s achievement in winning the Premier League straight after succeeding the legendary Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool. “I would say it was a very different team than under Klopp, with different components and ingredients.”

The value of dressing room leaders

What they all have in common, and something key to a successful rebuild in Neville’s eyes, is that they inherited the right type of characters in the dressing room.

“You think of what Slot was handed last season: [Virgil] Van Dijk, Alisson, [Mohamed] Salah, [Andrew] Robertson, [Alexis] Mac Allister, Trent [Alexander-Arnold].

“They are five or six proven winners at the highest level and they have been around the block. They’ve got pride and ego and they are not going to sit there and use the fact there’s a new manager coming in as an excuse not to perform well.

“Players can hide behind managers. But if you’ve got good characters and leaders, people who have standards in their personal lives, you’re going to get a better outcome.

“Slot harnessed that. He did a good job with those leaders. But he is not the one in the dressing room. People may or may not know this, but managers might not go in the dressing room at the training ground even for one minute during the week.

“For all those hours, it is policed by the senior players.”

Heavy investment was of course vital to the success of those previous Chelsea and Manchester City’s rebuilds. But both Mourinho and Guardiola also inherited senior players to build around.

For Mourinho at Chelsea, it was John Terry and Frank Lampard. Guardiola could call on Fernandinho, Vincent Kompany, Sergio Aguero and David Silva at City.

Why Amorim’s Man Utd rebuild is ‘unique’

Guardiola has some similar characters now in Ruben Dias, Bernardo Silva and Ederson, among others. At United, though, Amorim inherited very different personnel to the dressing room Neville experienced there in his playing days.

“For us it was Roy Keane, Bryan Robson, Mark Hughes, Steve Bruce. Then when me, [Paul] Scholesy and others got older, it was us. When we left, others took over,” he explains.

“You’re asking those players in the dressing room to set the standards, to make sure negativity doesn’t creep in. The people who sap energy, close them off straight away. Don’t let them drain you, the people who constantly whinge in a negative way”

Amorim is still in the process of overhauling his dressing room as he aims to reverse a years-long slide from their success under Ferguson. Manchester United have signed three new attackers in Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko but are still struggling to shift numerous unwanted players.

“This is a really unique situation,” says Neville. “I said before that you don’t get three or four years to build a team, but because of Manchester United’s relentless poor form over two, three, four or five years, it will take quite a bit to unwind that.

“Amorim has got players he quite clearly doesn’t want and doesn’t like, players on huge money, some of whom have cost huge money. And even if you do get them out, some of their wages will probably have to be subsidised by the club.

“So, I think he has a minimum of a two-and-a-half-year build to get to the point he wants with his unique system and buying the players he wants to fit that, just because of what has gone on there previously, but he’s going to have to demonstrate progress.

“The problem he has is that you’ve got a top five now who like they are getting into the Champions League and the penalty for not being in the Champions League is big now because all these clubs – United, Villa, Newcastle, Chelsea – are on the edge on PSR.

“It’s big for them if they drop out of those Champions League places. So Amorim has got to be relatively successful, which means finishing in the top four or top five, all while building a new team and recruiting the players he wants.”

Can Man City repeat the success of their last rebuild… and avoid another ‘big mistake’?

Circumstances matter too when it comes to rebuilding efficiently. Guardiola knows that well given the importance of expiring contracts to his first Manchester City overhaul. A long list of departures in 2017 gave him space to reshape his squad.

“In that moment it was eight, nine or 10 players out of contract, so it’s easy to rebuild the club,” he tells Sky Sports. “When you have contracts, you have to respect the contracts of the players, unless the players want to leave the club.”

The list of players who reached the ends of their deals after Guardiola’s first season included Gael Clichy, Pablo Zabaleta, Willy Caballero, Bacary Sagna and Jesus Navas. This summer, by contrast, the only one feels like a significant loss in Kevin De Bruyne.

Guardiola points out there was a significant loss back in 2017 too. “In that moment, we made one big mistake which was to not keep Jesus Navas with us,” he says.

“I think he would have helped us a lot for the next years because he was a player who could play as a full-back, as a full-back inside, as a right-winger. He was incredible.

“For the rest, the club decided they needed new, fresh energy, so that’s why we rebuilt. They bought some unbelievable players like Kyle Walker and Bernardo Silva; top-class players who helped us start to do what we have done.”

Manchester City are having to work harder to shift players this time around. Their signings so far this summer have left them with a squad of 33 as things stand.

Their plight last season shows the importance of forward planning. Could City’s drop-off have been avoided if they had acted sooner to refresh their personnel?

“It’s bloody hard when you’ve got a team that’s won the treble, and a group of players who have been so good,” says Neville. “But they do tend to grow a little bit old together.

“It’s about how you change it and when you change it when you have been as successful as they have been. To do it after a treble is the most difficult time.”

Neville sees some parallels between the plight of City’s treble-winning team and that of United’s in 1998/99.

“It felt like we only signed one or two players in the two years after the treble. We won the league in those years but then we saw a sharp decline and we only won one of the next four.

“You get this euphoric moment winning a treble, where you’ve built an unbelievable team, but within a couple of years they grow a little bit old together and you’ve got a situation where you can fall off the edge of a cliff and end up having to make big changes.”

Pep: My toughest challenge? No! They called me ‘Fraudiola’!

Neville describes Manchester City’s current rebuild as Guardiola’s “toughest job” in management. “You get to the point where you think, ‘will he win it next season, or will it take two or three years?'” he says. But the man himself sees it differently.

“The most challenging summer was when I was chosen to be the manager of the second team at Barcelona and prove myself to the board,” he says with a smile.

“Then the challenge was to take over the Barcelona first team and prove myself, and after that go to Germany after the legend Jupp Heynckes had won the treble, when my German language was a disaster, to convince the players to keep going and winning.

“Then it was arriving here and in the first press conference they said, ‘the club have brought you here to win the Champions League’, and I said, ‘wait a minute, please!’ After that I was ‘Fraudiola’ and it was a disaster in the seasons we didn’t win it.”

Guardiola is eager to point out that he saw progress even in his fraught first season, when he was assisted by now Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Manchester City finished 15 points behind eventual Premier League champions Chelsea.

“In the first season we played really, really well in moments,” he says. “Always with Mikel we talk about that, that in that first season we started to build something. This season is not the most difficult one because we did it. We proved we could do it.”

Guardiola is encouraged by how his side finished last season too, even if it ended in the disappointment of a second consecutive FA Cup final loss at Wembley, this time to Crystal Palace.

“I didn’t like the way we lost against Man Utd in the [previous] FA Cup final. I was grumpy. This season, I was sad because we played really, really well. They know it. They knew we were there, the spirit was there, the chances were there.

“We missed something we have to recover next season. That belongs to me, it belongs to the players, it belongs to all of us. And after that we will create a team which can compete game by game and start in a better position in the Premier League.”

Managing turbulence, lessons from Fergie

Guardiola stresses that pain forms part of every rebuild.

That was true even for Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson, who mastered the art during his historic Old Trafford tenure, creating a series of trophy-winning teams.

“Each transition came with a bit of turbulence,” says Neville.

“He got a lot of criticism in 1995, when we lost the league to Blackburn and he let Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis go. There was a poll in the Manchester Evening News saying the club should sack him, that he had run his course.

“We then lost the first game of the next season and Alan Hansen said you can’t win anything with kids. So, it was a lot of pressure at that time, changing and transitioning, and that is something you have to manage in a rebuild.

“We didn’t win the league for three years between 2003 and 2006. That’s the longest I ever went in my career. That was a point where Mourinho was absolutely on his game and [Arsene] Wenger’s football was sensational. They were brilliant teams.

“Our recruitment wasn’t the best. It took a while for Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo to come through, for Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra to settle in.

“That was the time where I thought, ‘will we win the league again?’ We did it in 2006 and that set us up for another five or six years of winning titles because that team was amazing. But the key was the foresight and bravery Sir Alex had to let players go.”

The principles behind that ruthlessness remain crucial in today’s game. It is about lowering the age of the squad and striking a balance between youth and experience while ensuring there is room for long-term growth and development.

“I used to think of it as a conveyer belt,” says Neville. “We came in in ’92, ’93, ’94. We were the young ones at the start of the conveyor belt and we had the older ones falling off. We eventually moved on to the end of the conveyor belt and fell off ourselves.

“I always thought you needed a group of players that were young, a group of players in their peak, and then a few, four or five, who were in their 30s and set the standards. I think that was the sort of age profile Sir Alex considered when building teams, but there was always some turbulence.”

As their respective rebuilds continue, Manchester United and City will hope the turbulence eases for them in the new campaign.

Sky Sports to show 215 live Premier League games this season season

This season, Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage will increase from 128 matches to at least 215 games exclusively live.

And 80 per cent of all televised Premier League games next season are on Sky Sports.

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